19,19′-Diacyloxy Signature: An Atypical Level of Structural Evolution in Carotenoid Pigments

Abstract

We report the isolation from the green dinoflagellate Lepidodinium chlorophorum and structural characterization of a new carotenoid termed lepidoxanthin (1), determined to be (3S,5R,6S,3'R,6'R)-5,6-epoxy-19-(2-decenoyloxy)-19'-acetoxy-4',5'-didehydro-5,6,5',6'-tetrahydro-β,ε-carotene-3,3'-diol. Its until now unidentified 19,19'-diacyloxy substitution constitutes a chemical signature that can aid in unraveling the evolutionary course of this unicellular algae based on the proposed biosynthethic pathway.

When phytoplankton do not bloom: the case of the dinoflagellate Lepidodinium chlorophorum in southern Brittany (France) assessed by environmental DNA

“…Among those, the marine dinoflagellate Lepidodinium chlorophorum is known to cause green seawater discoloration associated with massive proliferations . The capacity of this unarmoured dinoflagellate (Elbrächter and Schnepf, 1996;Hansen et al, 2007) to form green seawater discolorations is due to the presence of green-coloured plastids (Matsumoto et al, 2011) inherited from secondary endosymbiosis with a chlorophyte (Kamikawa et al, 2015;Gavalás-Olea et al, 2016;Jackson et al, 2018). Blooms of L. chlorophorum are widely distributed in coastal waters: in Chile (Iriarte et al, 2005;Rodríguez-Benito et al, 2020), California (Gárate-Lizárraga et al, 2014), Australia (McCarthy, 2013), as well as in Europe (Honsell and Talarico, 2004;Sourisseau et al, 2016;Siano et al, 2020, Serre-Fredj et al, 2021Roux et al, 2022).…”