Development and utilization of astaxanthin

Jun 21
02:22

2013

David Yvon

David Yvon

  • Share this article on Facebook
  • Share this article on Twitter
  • Share this article on Linkedin

Astaxanthin’s chemical name is 3,3-dihydroxy-4, 4-dioxo-², ²- carotene, is a keto form carotenoid, color is pink, with fat-soluble, insoluble in water, soluble in chloroform, acetone, benzene and carbon disulfide and other organic solvents.

mediaimage

Astaxanthin is a non-vitamin A source carotenoid,Development and utilization of astaxanthin Articles in animals body can not be converted to vitamin A. But astaxanthin is a chain scission antioxidants, with strong antioxidant capacity. Animal tests show that astaxanthin can remove NO2, sulfide, carbides, but also can reduce lipid peroxidation, effective to inhibit lipid peroxidation induced by free radicals. Astaxanthin can suppress tumorigenesis, enhance immunity, remove free radicals, and many other physiological effects, on UV-induced skin cancer have good therapeutic effect, on diabetic eye disease also have better control role, in health chemicals, pharmaceuticals,cosmetics material, food additives, aquaculture also has broad application prospects.

Chemical synthesis, astaxanthin is the final product of carotenoid synthesis, the ²-carotene transform into astaxanthin need to add two ketone groups and hydroxyl. Chemical synthetic is difficult, and most are the cis-structure. Synthetic trans-astaxanthin is expensive (now the international market price is about $2,000/kg), limiting their wider application. At present, because of biological astaxanthin content is not high enough, the chemical synthesis astaxanthin still has a competitive advantage.

Biological extraction, astaxanthin extracted from organisms are trans structure, safe in utilization and with environmentally friendly nature, have broad development prospects. Current biological sources of astaxanthin mainly: astaxanthin suppliers extract from the wastes of fish processing industry and use microbial fermentation production, methods are as follows:

Extract astaxanthin from production and processing wastes, the current international crab shrimp processing industry has 10 million tons aquatic crustaceans waste per year, with the polymerization system can extract astaxanthin from it, including astaxanthin esters and astacin, its yield can up to 153 micrograms/gram of waste. It should be noted that the waste will affect calcareous produce astaxanthin, therefore, it should be removed as far as possible while extracting. Practice has proved that adding an inorganic acid or an organic acid in the silage process, will destroy the portion binding of astaxanthin and protein or bone, thereby increasing the release of astaxanthin.

In many algae which can produce astaxanthin, pluvialis algae are very important astaxanthin producing bacteria. It was considered to be an astaxanthin microalgae which has commercial production prospects. The algae not only can autotrophia, the heterotrophic life also can be carried out. In the training process, if nitrogen deficiency, algae accumulate in astaxanthin. Currently, the international good pluvialis algae contains up to 0.2%-2% astaxanthin, generally accounts about more than 90% of total carotenoids, and has the advantages of resisting high temperature, faster growth rate and easy cultivate outdoors etc., are considered to be a kind of great potential algae used for mass production of astaxanthin.

There are two bacteria strains can produce astaxanthin: one is mycobacterial lactic acid, it produces astaxanthin in hydrocarbon medium, and can not produced astaxanthin in nutrient agar; another strain is short subtilis 103, which grow in the oil , the final biomass fermentation is 3g/L, pigmentation is only 0.03 mg/g.

Source:http://www.cosprm.com