Authors: Rossana CalegariSantos Ricardo Alexandre Diogo José Domingos Fontana Tania Maria Bordin Bonfim
Publish Date: 2016/01/11
Volume: 72, Issue: 5, Pages: 641-651
Abstract
Carotenoids are pigments that may be used as colorants and antioxidants in food pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries Since they also benefit human health great efforts have been undertaken to search for natural sources of carotenoids including microbial ones The optimization of culture conditions to increase carotenoid yield is one of the strategies used to minimize the high cost of carotenoid production by microorganisms Halophilic archaea are capable of producing carotenoids according to culture conditions Their main carotenoid is bacterioruberin with 50 carbon atoms In fact the carotenoid has important biological functions since it acts as cell membrane reinforcement and it protects the microorganism against DNA damaging agents Moreover carotenoid extracts from halophilic archaea have shown high antioxidant capacity Therefore current review summarizes the effect of different culture conditions such as salt and carbon source concentrations in the medium light incidence and oxygen tension on carotenoid production by halophilic archaea and the strategies such as optimization methodology and twostage cultivation already used to increase the carotenoid yield of these microorganisms
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