Early Embryogenesis of Brown Alga Fucus vesiculosus L. is Characterized by Significant Changes in Carbon and Energy Metabolism

Elena Tarakhovskaya, Valeriya Lemesheva, Tatiana Bilova, Claudia Birkemeyer
2017 Molecules  
Brown algae have an important role in marine environments. With respect to their broad distribution and importance for the environment and human use, brown algae of the order Fucales in particular became a model system for physiological and ecological studies. Thus, several fucoids have been extensively studied for their composition on the molecular level. However, research of fucoid physiology and biochemistry so far mostly focused on the adult algae, so a holistic view on the development of
more » ... ese organisms, including the crucial first life stages, is still missing. Therefore, we employed non-targeted metabolite profiling by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry to create a non-biased picture of the early development of the fucoid alga Fucus vesiculosus. We found that embryogenic physiology was mainly dominated by a tight regulation of carbon and energy metabolism. The first dramatic changes of zygote metabolism started within 1 h after fertilization, while metabolism of 6-9 days old embryos appeared already close to that of an adult alga, indicated by the intensive production of secondary metabolites and accumulation of mannitol and citric acid. Given the comprehensive description and analysis we obtained in our experiments, our results exhibit an invaluable resource for the design of further experiments related to physiology of early algal development.
doi:10.3390/molecules22091509 pmid:28891948 pmcid:PMC6151410 fatcat:colcsowb6nbrlef3ajy4nagwcu