Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the CAS, v.v.i.

Granting Departments:	Department of Biotechnology Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the CAS, v.v.i.
Study Programme/Specialization:	Biotechnology ( in English language )
Supervisor:	Ing. Irena Brányiková, Ph.D.

Annotation

Phycocyanin (PC) is a blue-coloured protein pigment associated with the accessory light-harvesting complex in microalgae. It is a water-soluble, multimeric compound having fluorescent tetrapyrrole chromophores. Recently, PC has been reported to have various therapeutic properties such as antioxidant, antidiabetic, antiaging, hepatoprotective, antimicrobial, anticancerous, immunoregulating, and antiinflammatory. Althought PC is already used in food technology and cosmetics, its potential is not yet fully exploited especially due to rapid degradation at acidic pH and relatively high price. The aim of this work will be to cultivate the cyanobacteria Limnospira sp., Aphanizomenon flos-aquae and red alga Galdieria sulphuraria (i), to determine the productivity of biomass and PC under different conditions in the autotrophic, heterotrophic and mixotrophic regime (ii), to optimize the production conditions on a laboratory scale (e.g. temperature, pH, source of nitrogen, carbon and energy) (iii), assess the chemical and thermal stability of PC (iv) and evaluate methods of PC extraction from the biomass including production costs estimation.