Sterol Distribution in Red Algae from the Waters of Eastern Long Island

Abstract

Seven species of red algae from the waters of eastern Long Island, New York were analyzed for their sterol content. The species studied were: Agardhiella tenera, Ahnfeltia plicata, Chondrus crispus, Corallina officinalis^Cystoclonium purpureum var. cirrhosum, Gracilaria foliifera, und Palmaria palmata. The major sterols found belong to C 27 compounds. Cholesterol was the predominant sterol in all species with the possible exception of Palmaria palmata. The presence of cholest-7-en-3/3-ol is reported for the first time in the Order Gigartinales. Considerable variations in the total sterol contents among these species were observed, ranging from l mg/kg for Palmaria palmata to 117 mg/kg for Agardhiella tenera. Comparison of the total sterol content of Palmaria palmata with previous analyses (50 to 190 mg/kg) from waters off eastern Canada indicate that significant regional differences in the sterol content of a given species can occur.

Fatty acid and sterol composition of gametophytes and sporophytes of <i>Chondrus crispus</i> (Gigartinaceae, Rhodophyta)

“…Thus, although in earlier studies sitosterol was cited as the major sterol in C. crispus (Heilbron, 1942;Saito and Idler, 1966), now it is know that the major sterol is cholesterol as was observed in this study (Alcaide et al, 1968(Alcaide et al, , 1969Freire and Ribas, 1975;Goldberg et al, 1982). Moreover, Iatrides et al (1978) cited cholesterol as the only sterol occurring in C. crispus.…”

“…Fattorusso et al (1975) believed that desmos-terol seemed to have some taxonomic significance since it was found in some species of Gigartinaceae (Goldberg et al, 1982;Patterson, 1992). However, Goad and Goodwin (1972) observed that the proportion of cholesterol and desmosterol can vary from sample to sample in a given species, with some samples containing only cholesterol or both C 27 sterols.…”