What is Astaxanthin?
Astaxanthin is a red pigment occurring naturally in a wide variety of living organisms. Although the word astaxanthin may not be commonly encountered in everyday speech, the pigment itself is found in many human foods, and you are quite likely to be consuming it in your diet already. Most crustaceans, including shrimp, crawfish, crabs and lobster, are tinted red by accumulated astaxanthin. The coloration of fish is often due to astaxanthin; the pink flesh of a healthy wild salmon is a conspicuous example. In commercial fish and crustacean farms, astaxanthin is commonly added to feeds in order to make up for the lack of a natural dietary source of the pigment (Torrissen et al. 1989). Not only does astaxanthin provide for pigmentation in these farmed animals, it also has been found to be essential for their proper growth and survival (Torrissen and Christiansen 1995). Astaxanthin is one of a group of natural pigments known as carotenoids. In nature, carotenoids are produced principally by plants and their microscopic relatives, the microalgae. Animals cannot synthesize carotenoids de novo, thus ultimately they must obtain these pigments from the plants and algae that support their food chains (Britton et al. 1995). Commercial production of astaxanthin from the microalga Haematococcus pluvialis is a growing business worldwide, primarily due to the rapid growth of this microorganism and its high astaxanthin content. Other commercial ventures for natural astaxanthin production utilize fermentation of the pink yeast Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous or extraction of the pigment from by-products of crustacea such as the Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba). In addition to production from natural sources, astaxanthin may be chemically synthesized, and synthetic astaxanthin is the major form currently being used in fish feeds (McCoy 1999). The astaxanthin molecule is similar to that of the familiar carotenoid beta-carotene (Fig. 1), but the small differences in structure confer large differences in the chemical and biological properties of the two molecules. In particular, astaxanthin exhibits superior antioxidant properties to beta-carotene in a number of in vitro studies (Terao 1989; Miki 1991; Palozza and Krinsky 1992; Lawlor and O'Brien 1995). While the positive effects of astaxanthin on farmed fish and crustaceans have been recognized for years, the potential benefits of this powerful antioxidant to human health are only now being revealed. Fig. 1. Structure of selected carotenoids References:
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Lawlor, S. M. and O'Brien, N. M. (1995) Astaxanthin: antioxidant effects in chicken embryo fibroblasts. Nutr. Res., 15:1695-1704.
McCoy, M. (1999) Astaxanthin market a hard one to crack. Chem.& Eng. News, 77: 15-17.
Miki, W. (1991) Biological functions and activities of animal carotenoids. Pure Appl. Chem., 63(1):141-146.
Palozza, P. and Krinsky, N. I. (1992) Astaxanthin and canthaxanthin are potent antioxidants in a membrane model. Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 297:291-295.
Terao, J. (1989) Antioxidant activity of beta-carotene-related carotenoids in solution. Lipids, 24: 659-661.
Torrissen, O. J. and Christiansen, R. (1995) Requirements for carotenoids in fish diets. J. Appl. Ichthyol., 11:225-230.
Torrissen, O.J., R.W. Hardy, and K.D. Shearer. (1989) Pigmentation of salmonids--carotenoid deposition and metabolism. CRC Crit. Rev. Aquat. Sci., 1: 209-225.
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