Title : Microalgae in terms of food biotechnology: Probiotics, prebiotics, and metabiotics
Abstract:
Green, red, brown, and diatomic algae, as well as cyanobacteria, have been in the focus of attention of scientists and technologists for over five decades. This is due to their importance in the capacity of efficient and economical producers of food additives, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, biofertilizers, biofuels, and wastewater bioremediation agents. Recently, the role of microalgae has increasingly been considered in terms of their probiotic function, i.e. of their ability to normalize the functioning of the microbiota of humans and agricultural animals and to produce biologically active substances, including hormones, neurotransmitters, and immunostimulators. A separate subsection of the presentation deals with the potential functions of microalgae with respect to the brain and psyche, i.e. in the capacity of psychobiotics that can be used as valuable food supplements. Moreover, algal polysaccharides and some other compounds can be broken down to short fragments that will stimulate the development of useful intestinal microorganisms, i.e. function as efficient prebiotics. Finally, many components of microalgal cells and chemical agents produced by them can exert important health-promoting effects per se, which enables considering them as potentially valuable metabiotics (the term preferred by late Prof. B.A. Shenderov) that are alternatively denoted as postbiotics in the literature.
Audience Take Away:
- The audience is expected to pay attention to microalgal species/strains/components that will be of use in terms of their specific food production-related projects. For instance, supplementing ice cream, juices, hamburgers, or many other food items with economical and health-promoting algal colorants will enable giving the food any of the colors available on the microalgal “easel”, whether the emerald green or bluish green of chlorophylls of the deep red of astaxanthin
- This is expected to help the audience make their food not only delicious and esthetically appealing, but also very healthy, due to the antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-aging, and other activities of the algal components involved.
- Other research institutions around the globe are invited to join us in developing recipes and techniques of increasing algal biomass-producing efficiency; we have our own tricks enabling microalgae to grow faster and produce greater amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, carotenoids, and a whole gamut of other valuable components.
