Chapter 5: Biological catalyzers of brown seaweed: biochemical properties, production, and applications

Abstract

Brown seaweeds comprise a unique and rich composition of relevant polysaccharides and bioactive compounds that can reach up to 70% of seaweed tissue, with a wide application in food, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and biopolymer industries; but due to the complexity of the seaweed cell wall structure, the extraction methods play a very important role in the recovery of significant amounts of hydrocolloids as alginate, fucoidan, laminarin, mannitol, etc. The use of enzymes as an extraction and hydrolysis method to recovery seaweed compounds has particular advantages because of its high chemo-, regio-, and stereoselectivity to specifically break down target sites acting as mechanical barriers. Also, enzyme catalysis on seaweed produces less contaminant fractions of undesired metabolites, causing a reduction in downstream process cost. Thus, it is possible to be classified as an environmental friendly and sustainable method in contrast to thermochemical acid, base, or solvent extraction of polysaccharides. This chapter aims at a better understanding of the enzyme catalyzers applied in brown seaweed hydrolysis; the biochemical reaction performance and fields of application also are discussed.