Microalgae as a sustainable source of edible proteins and bioactive peptides – Current trends and future prospects

Bioactivity and Digestibility of Microalgae Tetraselmis sp. and Nannochloropsis sp. as Basis of Their Potential as Novel Functional Foods

“…Overall, Nannochloropis and Tetraselmis genera can be considered as a good source of proteins with desirable amino acid profile. Proteins in Tetraselmis range from 13% to 48% in dry weight (DW) biomass basis, although most species have protein levels of approximately 30%, mainly depending on the growing environmental factors [ 14 , 15 , 16 ]. The introduction of Nannochloropsis as a novel food is also justified by the high protein of appreciable nutritional value [ 17 ].…”

“…In the last years, other compounds present in microalgae have been determined to contribute to the health benefits, namely it was discovered that microalgae proteins can exert biological activities through peptides included into their sequence and released by use of exogenous enzymes from microbial or mammalian origin as well as via gastrointestinal proteases [ 14 ]. Bioactive peptides have been determined to exert multiple bioactivities such as antioxidant, anti-microbial, anti-hypertensive, chemopreventive, and modulatory of immune, nervous and/or metabolic systems.…”

“…In general terms, the disruption of the cell wall of microalgae prior to digestion is highly recommended to facilitate the action of digestive enzymes. This should be considered especially for microalgae with thick and rigid cell walls, such as Nannochloropsis sp., as their digestibility is affected by the selected disruption treatment [ 14 ].…”

“… 1 Values from Wild et al [ 22 ]; 2 values from Kumar et al [ 14 ]. AAA: aromatic amino acids (phenylalanine, tryptophan, and tyrosine); HAA: hydrophobic amino acids (alanine, valine, isoleucine, leucine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, methionine, proline, and cysteine); TAA: total amino acids.…”

Editorial: Production, downstreaming, and utilization of proteins and exopolysaccharides from single cells in food matrices

“…Downstream processing of single-cell organisms is one of the most discussed and researched areas. Recently the processing of microalgae and microbial cells has been the main target for the production of proteins (Kumar et al, 2022), oils, or other special components usable e.g., in chromatography (Shukla et al, 2007;Käferböck et al, 2020;de Carvalho et al, 2022;Pleissner and Smetana, 2022). The studies indicated the increase of purity and amount of separated fractions and possibilities for the targeted separation in the case of application of emerging processing technologies.…”