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Ammonium chloride: a novel effective and inexpensive salt solution for phycocyanin extraction from Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis

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Abstract

Phycocyanin, a blue pigment, is a type of phycobiliproteins. Because of its various potential properties, phycocyanin is applied to various fields, such as nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, medicine, cosmetics, and biotechnological research. The cost and application of phycocyanin are highly dependent on its purity index. In this study, ammonium chloride is presented as a novel, effective, and inexpensive salt for phycocyanin extraction. Compared with sodium phosphate, which is commonly used during phycocyanin extraction process, ammonium chloride solution efficiently extracted phycocyanin with high purity from Arthrospira platensis FACHB-314. In addition, ammonium phosphate solution is also presented as an alternative precipitation agent in phycocyanin purification that may replace the widely used ammonium sulfate. Statistical analysis shows that there is no significant difference in phycocyanin concentration between crude extracts (overall mean of 0.208 and 0.215 for extraction using sodium phosphate and ammonium chloride, respectively). However, the difference in phycocyanin purity ratio (A620/A280) between these two extractions is significant (overall mean of 0.742 and 1.428 for extraction using sodium phosphate and ammonium chloride, respectively). With ammonium chloride, the purity indexes of phycocyanin are 1.5 and 2.81 after the optimum extraction step, and precipitation used as the primary purification step, respectively. The present study describes a novel purification method to achieve phycocyanin with analytical grade without multiple purification steps.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Government of Rwanda through University of Rwanda-College of Education for giving a Ph.D. study leave to Mr. Manirafasha Emmanuel and the Government of People’s Republic of China for financially supporting his Ph.D. studies. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31071488), the National High Technology Research and Development Program 863, China (No. 2014AA021701), and the State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21336009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Emmanuel Manirafasha, Theophile Murwanashyaka, Theoneste Ndikubwimana, Qian Yue, Yinghua Lu & Keju Jing

  2. The Key Lab for Synthetic Biotechnology of Xiamen City, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Xianhai Zeng, Yinghua Lu & Keju Jing

  3. College of Energy, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Xianhai Zeng

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  1. Emmanuel Manirafasha
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  2. Theophile Murwanashyaka
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  3. Theoneste Ndikubwimana
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  4. Qian Yue
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  5. Xianhai Zeng
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  6. Yinghua Lu
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  7. Keju Jing
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Correspondence to Yinghua Lu or Keju Jing.

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Manirafasha, E., Murwanashyaka, T., Ndikubwimana, T. et al. Ammonium chloride: a novel effective and inexpensive salt solution for phycocyanin extraction from Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis . J Appl Phycol 29, 1261–1270 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-016-0989-y

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