I am kind of having problem to extract polysaccharides from microalgae cultured in sea water. I found that the usual polysaccharides ethanol extraction method does not work well when used with microalgae cultured in sea water. The negative control which is plain sea water treated with ethanol did have precipitation most probably salts. The control sample supposed to be free from any precipitation after the extraction treatment. This method was perfectly fine when I did extract polysaccharides in liquid culture aside from sea water based media. So the problem is how to remove salt content while at the same time retain the polysaccharides in the culture, so that the polysaccharides could be extracted later on. Could anyone suggest any solution about this, thank you.
Hi:
If you use ethanol or other alcohols you get salt precipitation so, some suggestions:
- Use desalting columns to remove salt, and then extract the polysaccharides using alcohols.
- If you know the nature of your polyssacharides, maybe you can use resins (column chromatography) to retain the polyssacharides (replacing salt water by others solutions/buffers).
Good luck!,
Rosa María
You can 'desalt' your extract with Sephadex G-15 columns (if they still make them).
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Analytical Chemistry
- Extraction