The use of the invasive allien species Rugulopteryx okamurae (Ochrophyta) as source of cosmeceutical compounds

The brown macroalga Rugulopteryx okamurae (Dictyotales, Ochrophyta) is invading the western coast Mediterranean sea from 2016. In Spain, it is consider exotic invasive species from December, 2020. Recently , it is starting to invade areas in Provence coast (France) and the Azores Islands (Portugal). This risk studies have stablished that it can potentially extend in the whole Mediterranean Sea. This algal species originated from East Asia was identified the first time in the Mediterranean Sea by 2002 in the Thau Lagoon (France) , where its entering was associated to oyster aquaculture. Rugulopteryx can be fixed in hard substrates from the surface to 40 m depth presenting the highest cover (95-100%) about 10-20 m depth. It can be also mantained long time as free floating algae and in addition it can be observed as beach cast algae. Drastic alterations in the biodiversity of the native communities and high impacts in fish and touristic economical sectors are being produced . In addition to the prevention, one strategy to control the invasion in high impacted areas is to harvest specimens for commercial use to obtained natural bioactive compounds . This strategy presents a two-folded opportunity i.e high availability of biological material for the extraction of bioactive compounds for cosmeceutical uses and through specimen collection , mitigating negative effects caused by alien species, contributing to ecosystem integrity and sustainability. In this study seasonal pattern of biomass productivity, photosynthetic capacity and the accumulation of high cosmeceutical compounds as polyphenols and fucoidans and biochemical content (protein, lipids and carbohydrates) are presented. R.okamurae has a high carbon content (35-42%) and broad range of internal N content (1.5-4.5%).Photosynthetic capacity is maintained very high throughout the year with the maximal production and accumulation of high value compounds in summer. Toxicity of extracts was also evaluated.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Antioxidant Activity and Phenolic Content of Marine Dissolved Organic Matter and Their Relation to Molecular Composition

The potential of marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) for free radical scavenging has been extensively evaluated, however, the quantitative assessment of the antioxidant potential has been recently measured for the first time. The linkage of the DOM antioxidant potential to its molecular composition has not yet been examined. Following this line, this article takes a step forward by assessing, throughout a polarity-mediated fractionation, (1) the antioxidant capacity and phenolic content and (2) the molecular characterization of DOM in a more exhaustive manner. (3) The DOM antioxidant potential and phenolic content was linked to the molecular composition of DOM, which was molecularly characterized using ultrahigh resolution Fourier transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS). Antioxidant activity and phenolic content were quantified by the free radical 2,2’-azino-bis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS⋅) and the Folin-Ciocalteu methods, respectively. We considered three types of different natural DOM samples: the deep North Pacific Ocean, the oligotrophic surface of the North Pacific Ocean and porewater from the sulfidic tidal flats of the Wadden Sea. Bulk porewater and its individual polarity fractions presented the highest antioxidant activity and phenolic content. DOM from the water column samples had lower antioxidant activity and phenolic content than porewater, but exceeded what it is commonly found in macroalgae, microalgae, fruits and vegetables with cosmeceutical purposes. Our values were similar to published values for terrestrial DOM. The variations in bioactivity were dependent on polarity and molecular composition. The high resolution and high mass accuracy used to determine the molecular composition of marine DOM and the chemometric and multistatistical analyses employed have allowed to distinguish molecular categories that are related to the bioactive potential. As a future perspective, we performed cytotoxicity tests with human cells and propose marine DOM as a natural ingredient for the development of cosmeceutical products

Patterns and drivers of UV absorbing chromophoric dissolved organic matter in the euphotic layer of the open ocean

The global distribution of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in the euphotic layer of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans (between 35° N and 40° S) was analyzed by absorption spectroscopy during the Malaspina 2010 circumnavigation. Absorption coefficients at 254 nm (a254) and 325 nm (a325), indices (a254/a365) and spectral slopes (between 275 and 295 nm, S275-295) were calculated from the dissolved fraction of the UV absorption spectra to describe the amount and quality of CDOM. Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) were applied to evaluate the relevance of physical and biogeochemical drivers for the variability of CDOM. Besides the low CDOM values, a first division of our data following the Longhurst’s biogeographic classification showed significant differences in CDOM levels among provinces. The lowest values of a254 and a325 were found in the oligotrophic gyres, particularly in the Indian Ocean, and the highest in the upwelling areas, particularly in the Equatorial Pacific. Opposite distributions were obtained for S275-295 and a254/a365, indicative of higher photobleaching in the gyres. Within each province, whereas a254 was constant through the photic layer, a325 increased significantly with depth as a result of the dominance of photobleaching over biological production in the surface layer and the opposite at depth. The Pacific provinces, including the subtropical gyres, showed, however, significantly higher a325 values, indicative of lower photobleaching/higher biological production. The GAM analysis indicates that a254 and a325 were primarily related to chlorophyll a (Chl a), exhibiting a significant positive linear response. Interestingly, Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus abundances were related to these absorption coefficients. Apparent oxygen utilization also contributed to explain the distributions of these absorption coefficients, being inversely related to a254 and directly related to a325. These results are consistent with the premise that a254 could be a proxy for the concentration of dissolved organic carbon and a325 for the aromatic by-products of biological degradation. The GAM analysis also shows that a254/a365 and S275-295 exhibited inverse relationships with solar radiation, indicating that the biological production of CDOM counteracts photodegradation as solar radiation increases. In summary, whereas photobleaching dictates the vertical distribution of CDOM, Chl a explains the CDOM differences among the photic layer of the tropical and subtropical ocean provinces visited during the circumnavigationMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. CDS2008-0007

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the open Mediterranean Sea. II: Basin-wide distribution and drivers of fluorescent DOM

Research articleFluorescent dissolved organic matter (FDOM) in the Mediterranean Sea was analysed by excitation–emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy and parallel factor (PARAFAC) analysis during the cruise HOTMIX 2014. A 4–component model, including 3 humic–like and 1 protein–like compounds, was obtained. To decipher the environmental factors that dictate the distributions of these components, we run generalized additive models (GAMs) in the epipelagic layer and an optimum multiparametric (OMP) water masses analysis in the meso– and bathypelagic layers. In the epipelagic layer, apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) and temperature presented the most significant effects on the variability of the marine humic-like peak M fluorescence, suggesting that its distribution was controlled by the net community respiration of organic matter and photobleaching. On the contrary, the variability of the soil humic-like peak E and the protein–like peak T fluorescence was explained mainly by the prokaryotic heterotrophic abundance, which decreased eastwards. In the meso– and bathypelagic layers, water mass mixing and basin–scale mineralization processes explained >72% and 63% of the humic–like and protein–like fluorescence variability, respectively. When analysing the two basins separately, the OMP model offered a better explanation of the distribution of fluorescence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, as expected from the reduced biological activity in this ultra–oligotrophic basin. Furthermore, while western Mediterranean deep waters display the usual trend in the global ocean (increase of humic–like fluorescence and decrease of protein–like fluorescence with higher AOU values), the eastern Mediterranean deep waters presented an opposite trend. Different initial fluorescence intensities of the water masses that mix in the eastern basin, with Adriatic and Aegean origins, seem to be behind this contrasting pattern. The analysis of the transect–scale mineralization processes corroborate this hypothesis, suggesting a production of humic–like and a consumption of protein–like fluorescence in parallel with water mass ageing. Remarkably, the transect–scale variability of the chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) absorbing at the excitation wavelength of the humic–like peak M indicates an unexpected loss with increasing AOU, which suggests that the consumption of the non–fluorescent fraction of CDOM absorbing at that wavelength exceeded the production of the fluorescent fraction observed hereProject HOTMIX (reference CTM2011–30010–C02 01–MAR and 02–MAR), co–financed with FEDER funds (re ference BES–2012–056175) ; the project MODMED from CSIC (PIE, 201730E020) and the project FERMIO (MINECO, CTM2014–57334–JIN), co–financed with FEDER fundsVersión del editor3,26

Chromophoric signatures of microbial by-products in the dark ocean

En prensa3,792

Molecular Diversity and Biochemical Content in Two Invasive Alien Species: Looking for Chemical Similarities and Bioactivities

The biochemical composition, molecular diversity, and two different bioactivities of Asparagopsis armata and Rugulopteryx okamurae (two alien species with different invasive patterns in the southern Iberian Peninsula) were analyzed through spectrophotometric methods and Fourier transform ion cyclotron mass spectroscopy (FT-ICR-MS). A total of 3042 molecular formulas were identified from the different extracts. The dH2O extracts were the most molecularly different. A. armata presented the highest content of nitrogenous compounds (proteins, CHON) and sulphur content, whereas R. okamurae was rich in carbonated compounds (total carbon, lipids, CHO, and CHOP). Antioxidant capacity and phenolic content were higher in R. okamurae than in A. armata. Antimicrobial activity was detected from both species. A. armata showed capacity to inhibit human and fish pathogens (e.g., Staphylococcus aureus or Vibrio anguillarum), whereas R. okamurae only showed inhibition against human bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Cutibacterium acnes). In R. okamurae, molecules with a great number of pharmaceutical activities (e.g., anti-inflammatory or antitumoral), antibacterial, biomaterial, and other utilities were found. The main molecules of A. armata had also pharmaceutical applications (e.g., antimalarian, antithrombotic, anti-inflammatory, or antiarthritis). The valorization of these species can help to counteract the environmental effects of the bioinvasions.This research was funded by the BLUEMARO Project from the Science and Innovation Ministry of the Spanish Government (grant number PID2020-116136RB-I00) and by the Start-up funding for junior research groups of the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, “pharmaDOM”. Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga

Soothsaying DOM: A Current Perspective on the Future of Oceanic Dissolved Organic Carbon

The vast majority of freshly produced oceanic dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is derived from marine phytoplankton, then rapidly recycled by heterotrophic microbes. A small fraction of this DOC survives long enough to be routed to the interior ocean, which houses the largest and oldest DOC reservoir. DOC reactivity depends upon its intrinsic chemical composition and extrinsic environmental conditions. Therefore, recalcitrance is an emergent property of DOC that is analytically difficult to constrain. New isotopic techniques that track the flow of carbon through individual organic molecules show promise in unveiling specific biosynthetic or degradation pathways that control the metabolic turnover of DOC and its accumulation in the deep ocean. However, a multivariate approach is required to constrain current carbon fluxes so that we may better predict how the cycling of oceanic DOC will be altered with continued climate change. Ocean warming, acidification, and oxygen depletion may upset the balance between the primary production and heterotrophic reworking of DOC, thus modifying the amount and/or composition of recalcitrant DOC. Climate change and anthropogenic activities may enhance mobilization of terrestrial DOC and/or stimulate DOC production in coastal waters, but it is unclear how this would affect the flux of DOC to the open ocean. Here, we assess current knowledge on the oceanic DOC cycle and identify research gaps that must be addressed to successfully implement its use in global scale carbon models

Global beta diversity patterns of microbial communities in the surface and deep ocean

This is contribution 1112 from AZTI Marine Research Division.-- 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, supporting information https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13572.-- Data Availability Statement: DNA sequences for surface prokaryotes are publicly available at the European Nucleotide Archive [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena; accession number PRJEB25224 (16S rRNA genes)], for deep prokaryotes at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra) under accession ID SRP031469, and for surface and deep picoeukaryotes at the European Nucleotide Archive with accession number PRJEB23771 (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena). Environmental data used in this study are available from https://github.com/ramalok/malaspina.surface.metabacoding, Giner et al. (2020) and Salazar et al. (2015). The code to analyze the data and produce the figures of this research is available from the corresponding author upon request.-- This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Ernesto Villarino, James R. Watson, Guillem Chust ,A. John Woodill, Benjamin Klempay, Bror Jonsson, Josep M. Gasol, Ramiro Logares, Ramon Massana, Caterina R. Giner, Guillem Salazar, X. Anton Alvarez-Salgado, Teresa S. Catala, Carlos M. Duarte, Susana Agusti, Francisco Mauro, Xabier Irigoien, Andrew D. Barton; Global beta diversity patterns of microbial communities in the surface and deep ocean; Global Ecology and Biogeography 31(11): 2323-2336 (2022), which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13572. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived VersionsAim: Dispersal and environmental gradients shape marine microbial communities, yet the relative importance of these factors across taxa with distinct sizes and dispersal capacity in different ocean layers is unknown. Here, we report a comparative analysis of surface and deep ocean microbial beta diversity and examine how these patterns are tied to oceanic distance and environmental gradients. Location: Tropical and subtropical oceans (30°N–40°S). Time period: 2010-2011. Major taxa studied: Prokaryotes and picoeukaryotes (eukaryotes between 0.2 and 3 μm). Methods: Beta diversity was calculated from metabarcoding data on prokaryotic and picoeukaryotic microbes collected during the Malaspina expedition across the tropical and subtropical oceans. Mantel correlations were used to determine the relative contribution of environment and oceanic distance driving community beta diversity. Results: Mean community similarity across all sites for prokaryotes was 38.9% in the surface and 51.4% in the deep ocean, compared to mean similarity of 25.8 and 12.1% in the surface and deep ocean, respectively, for picoeukaryotes. Higher dispersal rates and smaller body sizes of prokaryotes relative to picoeukaryotes likely contributed to the significantly higher community similarity for prokaryotes compared with picoeukaryotes. The ecological mechanisms determining the biogeography of microbes varied across depth. In the surface ocean, the environmental differences in space were a more important factor driving microbial distribution compared with the oceanic distance, defined as the shortest path between two sites avoiding land. In the deep ocean, picoeukaryote communities were slightly more structured by the oceanic distance, while prokaryotes were shaped by the combined action of oceanic distance and environmental filtering. Main conclusions: Horizontal gradients in microbial community assembly differed across ocean depths, as did mechanisms shaping them. In the deep ocean, the oceanic distance and environment played significant roles driving microbial spatial distribution, while in the surface the influence of the environment was stronger than oceanic distanceData collection was funded by the Malaspina 2010 Circumnavigation Expedition project (Consolider-Ingenio 2010, CSD2008-00077) and cofunded by the Basque Government (Department Deputy of Agriculture, Fishing and Food Policy). We acknowledge funding from the Spanish Government through the “Severo Ochoa Center of Excelence” accreditation CEX2019-000928-S. [...] We also acknowledge H2020 Mission Atlantic project (Ref. Grant Agreement Number 862428). EV was supported by an international exchange post-doc scholarship to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Oregon State University granted by the Education Department of the Basque GovernmentPeer reviewe

Large carbon export, but short residence times, of transparent exopolymer particles in the global ocean

ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting 2023, Resilience and Recovery in Aquatic Systems, 4–9 June 2023, Palma de Mallorca, SpainAcidic polysaccharides released by phytoplankton and prokaryotic heterotrophs promote the formation of gel-like transparent exopolymer particles (TEPs). TEPs can have a relevant contribution to the biological carbon pump due to their carbon-rich composition and their ability to coagulate and sink towards the deep ocean. However, little is known about TEPs distribution, carbon export, and residence times below the export (200 m) and sequestration (1000 m) depths. We provide the first comprehensive inventory of TEP from the ocean surface to a depth of 4000 meters in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, evaluating its contribution to carbon export and sequestration into the deep ocean. Results indicate that TEP concentration is primarily determined by primary production, with higher concentrations located above the deep chlorophyll maxima. In the deep ocean, TEP concentrations are lower yet mirror the concentrations in the surface, demonstrating the significance of TEP sinking below both the export compartment (2.8 Pg C yr-1; 27% of total POC flux at 200 m) and the sequestration compartment (0.8 Pg C yr-1; 36% of total POC flux at 1000 m). In situ incubation experiments conducted across ocean basins indicate short TEP residence times, averaging 27 and 333 days in the export and sequestration compartments, respectively. These findings reveal that the export and subsequent sequestration of carbon by TEP sinking into the deep ocean diverts it from the long times observed for the dissolved carbon fraction (i.e. centuries) in the global carbon cycleN