Freshwater algae chemotaxonomy by high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis

Abstract

The study of community composition of algae is essential for understanding the structure and dynamics of the aquatic ecosystem and for evaluating the eutrophic level of the water body. A high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method based on a reverse-phase C₁₈ nonpolar column was developed for the main algal taxa, which includes cyanophytes, bacillariophytes, euglenophytes, dinophytes, and chlorophytes. Based on the elution order using HPLC, 19 pigments were identified, and they were chlorophyllide a, 19′-butanoyloxyfucoxanthin, chlorophyll c₁ + c₂, phephorbides a, peridinin, methyl-chlorophyllide a, fucoxanthin, neoxanthin, violaxanthin, myxoxanthophyll, diadinoxanthin, diatoxanthin, lutein, zeaxanthin, chlorophyll b allomer, chlorophyll b, chlorophyll a allomer, chlorophyll a, and β,β-carotene. A comparison study of cell microscopic counts and accessory pigment analysis indicated that HPLC analysis could be a useful tool for monitoring phytoplankton communities and their abundance.

Keywords

high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) / algae / pigment / chemotaxonomy

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by grants from the National Key Science Research Project of Eleven Five-Year Plan (Nos. 2009ZX07106-003 and 2008ZX07316-004), Tianjin Project of CAS (No. TJZX2-YW-07), Jiangsu Province project (NO. BE2008651) and Agricultural Science and Technology Achievement Transformation Project (No. 2009GB2A100015).

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