Water and Carbon Dioxide: Green Solvents for the Extraction of Collagen/Gelatin from Marine Sponges

Abstract

Marine sponges are extremely rich in natural products and are considered a promising biological resource. The major objective of this work is to couple a green extraction process with a natural origin raw material to obtain sponge origin collagen/gelatin for biomedical applications. Marine sponge collagen has unique physicochemical properties, but its application is hindered by the lack of availability due to inefficient extraction methodologies. Traditional extraction methods are time consuming as they involve several operating steps and large amounts of solvents. In this work, we propose a new extraction methodology under mild operating conditions in which water is acidified with carbon dioxide (CO 2) to promote the extraction of collagen/gelatin from different marine sponge species. An extraction yield of approximately 50% of collagen/gelatin was achieved. The results of Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), circular dichroism (CD), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) spectra suggest a mixture of collagen/gelatin with high purity, and the analysis of the amino acid composition has shown similarities with collagen from other marine sources. Additionally, in vitro cytotoxicity studies did not demonstrate any toxicity effects for three of the extracts.

Acid and enzymatic extraction of collagen from Atlantic cod (Gadus Morhua) swim bladders envisaging health-related applications

“…The spectra shown very similar profiles, suggesting that the extracts present similar structures and chemical compositions, with the characteristic peaks of Amide A, Amide B, Amide I, Amide II and Amide III being clearly visible. These findings are similar with other found in literature for other marine species [12,22,[26][27][28], as well as with collagens extracted from cod skin, also displayed in Figure 2 as reference. The N-H stretching vibration typical of intermolecular hydrogen bonding, commonly observed in a range between 3000-3500 cm À1 , is relative to the Amide A band and was here observed at 3400 cm À1 .…”

Cosmetic Potential of Marine Fish Skin Collagen

“…The absorption ratio between the amide III and 1450 cm −1 peaks was near to 1 (1.01 for salmon and 0.97 for codfish), which was an indicator of the preservation of the triple helix structure of collagen [49,[53][54][55][56]. These findings are similar to other findings found in the literature for other marine species [42,[57][58][59], as well as the ones in this study [41].…”

Collagen from Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) skins extracted using CO2 acidified water with potential application in healthcare

“…Using this methodology, an extraction yield of 13.8% ± 0.013, significantly higher than the one obtained with previous studies using the conventional methodologies based in acetic acid solutions, namely the ones reported by Alves et al [5] and Sousa et al [20] in which acid soluble collagen from cod by-products was extracted with 0.5 M acetic acid solution. This yield improvement, may be due to the fact that the process proposed in the present study consists of a single step with mild conditions and using acidified and pressurized water as the only solvent, although the co-extraction of gelatin could not be excluded as also observed when a similar CO 2 acidified water methodology was used for the collagen extraction from marine sponges [14,17].…”

“…The extraction of collagen from cod skins was achieved using supercritical fluids technology, in particular with water acidified by pressurization with CO 2 , similar to the methodology previously used for extraction of collagen from marine sponges [14,17,18]. The skins were cleaned several times with distilled water, for removal of muscle debris, scales and salt, and further grounded in small pieces.…”

“…The final characteristics of the product depend not only on their source (fish by-product) but also on the extraction methodologies used. The use of volatile organic solvents has been decreasing due to strict legislation and environmental concerns forcing industries to move forward the application to alternative processing methods, which comply with the green philosophy and essential for their competitiveness [14]. In that sense, new procedures are being studied in order to comply with the principles of green chemistry, and environmentally friendly alternative processes based in alternative technologies are reported in the literature.…”