Eliciting specialized metabolites from marine microalgae using abiotic stress

ABSTRACT

Advanced mass spectrometry and molecular networking techniques have led to an increase in the discovery of novel metabolites from bacteria and fungi. However, a systematic approach to exploring the metabolite profiles of microalgae in response to stress has not been performed. Unlocking the chemical potential of microalgae could provide further biotechnology applications in nutraceutical, biofuel, and cosmetic industries. This study explored the changes in metabolite production of strains of the three microalgae Dunaliella primolecta, Nannochloropsis oculata, and Phaeodactylum tricornutum cultured under varying nitrate, NaCl, salinity and pH conditions. A total of 2284 metabolites were detected across all strains and conditions, with 49% of those metabolites specific to cultures grown under stress (i.e., not present in the control). From comparison with 33 libraries of mass spectral data, only five metabolites were identified, stressing the need for more open-access natural product databases specifically focused on microalgae.

KEYWORDS:

• Microalgae
• molecular networking
• metabolites
• nitrate
• salinity
• pH

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/26388081.2023.2280928

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre.