Edited by: Donatella De Pascale, National Research Council- CNR, Italy
Reviewed by: Laura Núñez Pons, University of Hawai'i at Manöa, USA; Avinash Mishra, Central Scientific Industrial Research - Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute [CSMCRI], India
*Correspondence: Ioannis S. Boziaris, Department of Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment, School of Agricultural Sciences, University of Thessaly, Fitoko street, 38446, Nea Ionia, Volos, Greece e-mail:
This article was submitted to Marine Biotechnology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Marine environment affords a plethora of bioactive compounds with unique properties and remarkable potential for biotechnological applications. A lot of those compounds can be used by the food industry as natural preservatives, pigments, stabilizers, gelling agents, and others, while others exhibit beneficial effects and can be used as functional food ingredients, nutraceuticals, dietary supplements and prebiotics. Interdisciplinary approach is required to increase our knowledge, explore the potential of marine environment and produce value-added food for all.
As food scientist/microbiologist I have the perception that the marine environment is just a source of food for humans, just like it happens for the terrestrial environment under the practices of agriculture. Marine environment contribution to human food supply is as old as human existence in the planet and still most of the anthropogenic activities take place around the world's coasts. Humans have been using aquatic environments to collect their food from prehistoric periods with fishing being an older activity than agriculture. In our days, fisheries and aquaculture provides almost the 50% of the animal protein supply (FAO,
When I joined Academia at the Department of Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment at the University of Thessaly, Greece, I had the opportunity to meet and cooperate with colleagues from scientific disciplines like marine biology and ecology. Gradually I realized that apart from the contribution of marine environment to the world's food supply, the seas offer a far richer variety of useful constituents to be used in foods with a higher potential compared to the terrestrial environment. Marine environment, covering more than 70% of the earth's surface, hosts the greatest diversity of life which most of it is still unexplored. The ability of aquatic organisms to survive in a wide range of environmental conditions makes them to develop an enormous reservoir of bioactive compounds with unique properties and great potential for biotechnological applications.
Recently, there has been a growing interest for functional food ingredients, nutraceuticals, probiotic, prebiotic, and various dietary supplements (Shahidi,
The manufacturing of foods that provide additional health benefits to the consumer is an aspect of increasing interest for the modern society (Siegrist et al.,
The seas, while they remain relatively unharmed by negative anthropogenic activities, represent a gigantic reservoir of bioactive compounds. A plethora of compounds such as enzymes, proteins, peptides, polysaccharides, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), phenolics, pigments and other secondary metabolites from various sources, such as prokaryotes, micro- and macro-algae, seaweeds, crustaceans, sponges and other invertebrates as well as various vertebrates can be useful to the food industry in a number of applications (Holdt and Kraan,
PUFAs | Marine bacteria, microalgae, dinoflagellates, fungi, fish | Cronic diseases (e.g., cancer, heart diseases, atherosclerosis asthma, arthritis, vascular disease, thrombosis, immune-inflammatory processes, tumor proliferation) | Nutraceuticals, functional foods, food supplements |
Alginate, carrageenans, agar | Seaweeds | Gelling agents, stabilizers, | Gelling and emulsifying agents, edible films etc. |
Fucans, fucanoids | Seaweeds, sea vegetables | Antioxidant, anticancer, anti-arteriosclerosis, anti-tumor activity etc | Nutraceuticals |
Proteins, peptides and amino acids | Seaweeds, fish by-products | Diabetes, cancer, and AIDS and prevention of vascular diseases | Functional food, food supplements, food |
Bioactive peptides | Fish, mussels, microalgae, squid etc. | Antioxidant activity | Functional foods, nutraceutical, natural food preservatives |
Chitin, chitosan and their derivatives | Crustaceans | Antimicrobial activity | emulsifying agents, edible antimicrobial films, natural food preservatives |
Fibers | Seaweeds and other marine organisms | Prebiotic compounds | Food supplements nutraceuticals functional foods |
Carotenoids, astaxanthin, fucoxanthin | Seaweeds | Antioxidant and natural pigments | Natural preservatives and food colorants |
Bacterial pigments | Marine bacteria | Antimutagenic and anticancer effect | Functional foods, nutraceutical, natural food colorants |
Phenolic compounds, tannins, terpenes etc | Seaweeds and other marine plants | Antimicrobial and antioxidant activity | Natural food preservatives |
Marine microorganisms | Marine environment | Food fermentation, probiotic activity | Starter cultures, probiotic |
Marine organisms are the main source of ω-3 fatty acids, which exert beneficial effect against chronic diseases (Rubio-Rodríguez et al.,
Polysaccharides have numerous applications in food technology. Alginate, carrageenans and agar from various seaweeds can form hydrocolloids and are used as gelling agents, stabilizers and edible films in many food products, while others, e.g., fucans/fucanoids from various seaweeds and sea vegetables exhibit various beneficial actions, such as antioxidant, anticancer, anti-arteriosclerosi, anti-tumor, and others (Holdt and Kraan,
Various proteins, peptides and enzymes of marine origin have already application in the food industry, like collagen and gelatin, while others have potential applications. Bioactive peptides from fish, mussels, microalgae, squid etc. can act as natural antioxidants with the potential to replace less desirable chemical additives (Ngo et al.,
Marine pigments exhibit a great potential for use as antioxidants and natural food colorants. Carotenoids, astaxanthin, fucoxanthin and other compounds from seaweeds exhibit antioxidant and other activities and can be used by the food industry (Ngo et al.,
Apart from bioactive compounds from various organisms, marine microorganisms have also a great potential regarding food science and technology. They participate in fermentation of marine foods (Dewapriya and Kim,
So far the exploitation of bioactive ingredients from the sea is limited. Biodiversity in the seas has not been fully explored yet, mostly due to the difficulties that arise in investigation of marine organisms in contrast to the terrestrial environment. A plethora of bioactive ingredients have been discovered, studied and exploited from terrestrial organisms, mostly plants, which exhibit mainly antimicrobial and/or antioxidant activity. Numerous research projects aiming to approach the use of natural preservatives from plants have been funded either from European Union or other Organizations and National programs. Instead, research programs focusing on bioactive compounds from the marine environment has only initiated in the last decade, with a few ongoing research initiatives.
To exploit all the above-mentioned potential from the seas, an interdisciplinary approach is imperative. Disciplines like chemistry, microbiology, bioprocessing engineering, food technology, and others, can offer methodologies to optimize isolation, identification, purifications, production and application of the unique marine bioactive compounds for the production of value-added food. A flow diagram of potential actions and disciplines that might be required is shown in Figure
Additionally, the implementation of modern techniques and tools of molecular biology, genomics, proteomics, and others can also widen the horizons of our knowledge about the marine organism and the huge thesaurus of genes and metabolic functions they include (Imhoff et al.,
Concluding, the potential of marine environment as reservoir for useful bioactive molecules is enormous. Its capability to provide food constituents seems to be more than enough to aid us achieve the required food security. Application of modern technologies for efficient and sustainable production of value-added food products will be a future challenge that the scientific and technological society has to deal with for a more prosperous future.
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.