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

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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.