Unlocking the Brown Macroalgal Cell Wall: From Renewable UK Resource to Value-Added Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals

确定能够用于生物炼制过程以回收一系列有价值产品的合适原料的必要性日益重要。这将有助于确保人类有效利用生物资源，并取代石油化工衍生资源。与陆生植物相比，海藻是一种有吸引力的生物资源，因为它们是一种未充分利用的资源，不需要陆地来生长和栽培，也不直接与食物来源竞争。超过644种不同类型的海藻栖息在英国水域，为英国海藻生物经济的发展提供了巨大的潜力。尽管如此，目前收获的数量太少（每年约3000干吨），无法扩大英国的海藻产业。2012年，英国的海藻产业的价值为130万英镑。这是因为分布和可访问性问题以及与收获规则和许可相关的政策限制。尽管如此，海藻还是有可能推动英国的生物经济，因为它们拥有丰富的有价值的化合物，可用于制药、食品和化妆品，或转化为生物燃料。这项研究将在伦敦大学学院举行，旨在支持如何有效地获取这些化合物，并可持续地从英国丰富的褐藻中回收它们。目标化合物（多糖）被锁定在海藻细胞壁中，但目前文献中关于它们的位置和结构安排的信息很少。因此，本项目将首先研究龙葵细胞壁的生物结构，确定感兴趣的目标多糖的位置。通过在本研究中阐明它们的位置/建筑安排，将开发兼容和可持续的提取方法，以最大限度地提取产量。此外，这些提取的多糖在英国不同工业部门的新应用将被确定，包括食品和饮料，制药和生物燃料。这项研究最终将推动新型英国海藻生物精炼厂的发展，并为英国生物经济增加价值，这在当前英国脱欧后的形势下尤为重要。

The need to identify suitable feedstocks that are capable of being used in biorefinery processes to recover a range of valuable products is of increasing significance. This will help to ensure that mankind makes efficient usage of bioresources and to replace petro-chemical derived sources. Seaweeds are an attractive bioresource compared to land-based plants because they are an underutilised resource, do not require terrestrial land for growth and cultivation and do not directly compete with food sources. More than 644 different types of seaweed inhabit UK waters, offering great potential for the UK seaweed bio-economy to expand. Despite this, harvested quantities are currently too low (circa >3000 dry tonnes pa) to expand the UK's seaweed industry which was last valued at £1.3 m in 2012. This is because of distribution and accessibility issues and policy limitations that are associated with harvesting regulations and licensing. Nonetheless, seaweeds have the possibility to propel the UK bio-economy since they possesses a wealth of valuable compounds for applications in pharmaceuticals, food and cosmetics, or conversion into biofuels. This research that will be held at University College London, aims to underpin how to efficiently access these compounds and sustainably recover them from the UK abundant brown seaweed Laminaria digitata. The target compounds of interest (polysaccharides) are locked up in the seaweed cell wall, but there is little information in the current literature about their location and structural arrangements. Therefore, this project will firstly see to investigate L. digitata's cell wall biological architecture and locate the whereabouts of the targeted polysaccharides of interest. By elucidating their location/architectural arrangement in this research, compatible and sustainable extraction methods will be developed with the aim to maximum extraction yields. In addition, novel applications for these extracted polysaccharides across different UK industrial sectors will be identified including food and beverage, pharmaceutical and biofuel. This research will ultimately drive the development of novel UK-seaweed bio-refineries and add value to the UK-bioeconomy, something that is particularly critical in the current post-Brexit landscape.