Screening for bioactive compounds from algae

Abstract

At present, functional foods are seen as a good alternative to maintain or even improve human health, mainly for the well-known correlation between diet and health. This fact has brought about a great interest for seeking new bioactive products of natural origin to be used as functional ingredients, being, nowadays, one of the main areas of research in Food Science and Technology. Among the different sources that can be used to extract bioactives, algae have become one of the most promising. Algae have an enormous biodiversity and can be seen as natural factories for producing bioactive compounds since either by growing techniques or by genetic engineering approaches, they can improve their natural content of certain valuable compounds. In this book chapter, a revision about the different types of bioactives that have been described in algae is presented including compounds, such as lipids, carotenoids, proteins, phenolics, vitamins, polysaccharides, etc. Also, the modern green techniques used to achieve the selective extraction of such bioactives are presented and the methods for fast screening of bioactivity described.