Monosaccharide and aminoacid composition of mucilage material produced from a mixture of four phytoplanktonic taxa

A series of multi-taxa cultures containing five blue-green algae, three diatoms, one prymnesiophyte and one dinoflagellate was set up by using as inoculum sea water collected during a mucus-forming phytoplankton bloom in Euboikos Gulf, Aegean Sea. The cultured algae produced mucilage material that undergone quantitative and qualitative pigment, monosaccharide and aminoacid analyses with the use of HPLC methodology. Eight pigments (chlorophyll a, chlorophyll c, fucoxanthin, zeaxanthin, 19'-butanoylofucoxanthin, 19'-hexanoylofucoxanthin, peridinin and phaeophytin a) were identified and confirmed the species viability and their state of senescence. The qualitative composition of the recorded 8 monosaccharides (glucose, galactose, xylose, fucose, mannose, rhamnose, arabinose and glucosamine) and 15 aminoacids (arginine, glutamine, aspartate, serine, lysine, glysine, threonine, alanine, tyrosine, methionine, valine, phenylalanine, isoleucine, leucine and histidine) was similar in all cultures, but their quantitative composition differed among them and this might be due to their differences in species composition. The results also showed that the relative abundance of aminoacids and monosaccharides depended on the physiological state of the cells, the former being more abundant during the exponential phase and the latter mainly during the stationary phase of the cultures. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.