Extraction and Purification of Biopolymers from Marine Origin Sources Envisaging Their Use for Biotechnological Applications

Biopolymers are a versatile and diverse class of materials that has won high interest due to their potential application in several sectors of the economy, such as cosmetics, medical materials/devices, and food additives. In the last years, the search for these compounds has explored a wider range of marine organisms that have proven to be a great alternative to mammal sources for these applications and benefit from their biological properties, such as low antigenicity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability, among others. Furthermore, to ensure the sustainable exploitation of natural marine resources and address the challenges of 3R’s policies, there is a current necessity to valorize the residues and by-products obtained from food processing to benefit both economic and environmental interests. Many extraction methodologies have received significant attention for the obtention of diverse polysaccharides, proteins, and glycosaminoglycans to accomplish the increasing demands for these products. The present review gives emphasis to the ones that can be obtained from marine biological resources, as agar/agarose, alginate and sulfated polysaccharides from seaweeds, chitin/chitosan from crustaceans from crustaceans, collagen, and some glycosaminoglycans such as chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronic acids from fish. It is offered, in a summarized and easy-to-interpret arrangement, the most well-established extraction and purification methodologies used for obtaining the referred marine biopolymers, their chemical structure, as well as the characterization tools that are required to validate the extracted material and respective features. As supplementary material, a practical guide with the step-by-step isolation protocol, together with the various materials, reagents, and equipment, needed for each extraction is also delivered is also delivered. Finally, some remarks are made on the needs still observed, despite all the past efforts, to improve the current extraction and purification procedures to achieve more efficient and green methodologies with higher yields, less time-consuming, and decreased batch-to-batch variability.

Graphical Abstract