Increasing production and bio-accessibility of natural astaxanthin in Haematococcus pluvialis by screening and culturing red motile cells under high light condition

Feng Chen; Nianjun Xu; Kai Liu; Rongrong Lv; Jianxin Shi; Jianguo Liu; Xue Sun; Chaoyang Hu

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2022.128067

Increasing production and bio-accessibility of natural astaxanthin in Haematococcus pluvialis by screening and culturing red motile cells under high light condition

Bioresour Technol. 2022 Nov:364:128067. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2022.128067. Epub 2022 Oct 4.

Authors

Feng Chen¹, Nianjun Xu², Kai Liu², Rongrong Lv², Jianxin Shi³, Jianguo Liu⁴, Xue Sun², Chaoyang Hu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology of Zhejiang Province, School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315832, China; CAS and Shandong Key Laboratory of Experimental Marine Biology, Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China.
² Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology of Zhejiang Province, School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315832, China.
³ Joint International Research Laboratory of Metabolic & Developmental Sciences, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Yazhou Bay Institute of Deepsea Sci-Tech, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
⁴ CAS and Shandong Key Laboratory of Experimental Marine Biology, Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology of Zhejiang Province, School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315832, China. Electronic address: huchaoyang@nbu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36202281
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2022.128067

Abstract

The thick cell wall and low astaxanthin productivity were two important bottlenecks limiting industrial production of astaxanthin via Haematococcus pluvialis. This study reports a strategy for increasing production and bio-accessibility of astaxanthin in H. pluvialis by screening and culturing red motile cells under high light condition. Compared with the original strain NBU489, the biomass of the novel isolated strain RMS10 increased by 31.9% under low light condition, and the astaxanthin content (44.6 mg/g) increased by 53.3% after 9-day high light induction, which were readily extracted and digested without cell disruption. Subsequent transcriptomic analysis confirmed the accumulation of astaxanthin and lipids in RMS10 cells as expression of genes associated with biosynthesis of fatty acid and astaxanthin were up-regulated, while those involved in thick cell wall biosynthesis and reactive oxygen species scavenging were down-regulated in RMS10. Collectively, this study provides a simple and effective method for economical production of natural astaxanthin.

Keywords: Haematococcus pluvialis; Secondary cell wall; Simulated gastrointestinal digestion; Transcriptome; Wet extraction.