Disparity of the carotenoids antioxidant properties of wild-type and D-PSY-transgenic Dunaliella parva strains under three environmental stresses.

ABSTRACT

Two strains of the halophilic alga Dunaliella parva, a wild type (WT) and a transgenic strain (D-PSY) containing an exogenous phytoene synthase gene (PSY), were used to investigate the growth, carotenoid accumulation, and carotenoid antioxidant properties under nitrogen starvation, cobalt and biochar treatments. D-PSY had higher carotenoid content (1.8 times) compared to the WT. The applied stressors stimulated the carotenoid content of both WT and D-PSY especially. The carotenoids were assayed for the potential antioxidant activities by five different assays. Generally, the antioxidant activities of D-PSY carotenoids were superior to that of WT. The biochar and nitrogen treatments generally enhanced the antioxidant activities of the carotenoids, whereas cobalt came third in this respect. The D-PSY transgenic algal strain has both high carotenoids content and antioxidant properties which enhanced under the relatively lower concentrations of the applied stressors. The results have shown to lead to an accurate application of the transgenic alga as a source of potent antioxidant compounds. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-021-01077-0.