Rafael Félix1,2, Pedro Dias1, Carina Félix1, Adriana P. Januário1,2, Tânia Vicente1,2, Patrícia Valentão2, Marco F. L. Lemos1
1 MARE – Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, ESTM, Politécnico de Leiria, Peniche, Portugal
2 REQUIMTE/LAQV, Laboratório de Farmacognosia, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
Researchers and stakeholders have begun to pay more attention to marine natural products, since they have been shown to be efficient and sustainable alternatives for many different applications in different industries. Seaweeds in general, and invasive seaweeds in particular, are important biomass sources to investigate among marine biomass. Originally from New Zealand, Asparagopsis armata (Harvey, 1855) is an invasive red seaweed that has spread abundantly over Europe. As they develop quicker and compete for resources, its existence poses an environmental stress for nearby populations. As a result, there are negative environmental and economic consequences.
This seaweed has been shown to produce several metabolites, such as sulphated polysaccharides, bioactive small molecular weight carbohydrates, bioactive peptides, bioactive lipids and halogenated volatile organic compounds. These have been shown to possess a myriad of bioactivities, such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, antifouling and antimethanogenic activity; however, there is still plenty of work to be done regarding many of the potentially interested target industries.
In this work, we report a summary of the complete study of A. armata’s biotechnological potential, ranging from the manufacturing of 4 industry-friendly extracts (compatible with a biorefinery, sequential extraction approach), to their chemical characterization, to their bioactivity profiling with relevance for the food, feed, additives, nutraceutical, cosmeceutical, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries. Thus, a highlight of chemical composition and antibacterial, anti-yeast, anti-filamentous fungi, antioxidant, antienzymatic and cellular effects (cytotoxicity, photoprotection, anti-inflammatory and pro-healing) activities is presented.