Algae are classified as unicellular microalgae and macroalgae, which are macroscopic plants of marine benthoses. Macroalgae, also known as seaweed, are distinguished according to the nature of their pigments: brown seaweed (phaeophyta), red seaweed (rhodophyta) and green seaweed (chlorophyta) [1]. Seaweeds are considered as a source of bioactive compounds as they are able to produce a great var...

Red and brown seaweeds are natural foods for Haliotis discus hannai, an abalone species with dark-brown shells that is also known as Ezo. This preliminary study investigated the effect of seaweed on the color and quality of the meat and shells of this abalone. Results showed that a formulated test diet and an established commercial feed individually resulted in lower growth rates and meat prote...

Laboratory and field experiments were performed to assess the ecological roles of natural products produced by the Brazilian red seaweed Laurencia obtusa. Laboratory assays revealed that the natural concentration of the crude organic extract of L. obtusa significantly inhibited feeding by two herbivores: the crab Pachygrapsus transversus and the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus. It was verified...

This study pointed to the assessment of the chemical composition (F, Ca, Mg, Na, K, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Cr, Cd, and carbohydrate) of different marine seaweeds (red, green, and brown) from the Egyptian Mediterranean Sea coast. The results showed that green seaweeds supplied better calcium sources than the red and brown ones. Also, red and brown seaweeds showed higher averages of Na and K tha...

Yellow Sea green tides have occurred in coastal China almost every year from 2007 to 2011. Ulva prolifera (Müller) J. Agardh has been identified as the causative macroalgal species. U. intestinalis, however, has been observed in the bloom areas, co-occurring with U. prolifera, but it has not been found to be causative. The Yellow Sea green tide has shown consistent phases of development that ma...

Two known sesquiterpenes (1R*,2S*,3R*,5S*,8S*,9R*)-2,3,5,9tetramethyltricyclo[6.3.0.01,5]undecan-2-ol and (1S*,2S*,3S*,5S*,8S*,9S*)2,3,5,9-tetramethyltricyclo-[6.3.0.01,5]undecan-2-ol were isolated for the first time from the essential oil of the red seaweed Laurencia dendroidea collected in the Brazilian coast. These compounds were not active against eight bacteria strains and the yeast Candid...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder in the elderly people, currently with no cure. Its mechanisms are not well understood, thus studies targeting cause-directed therapy or prevention are needed. This study uses the transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans PD model. We demonstrated that dietary supplementation of the worms with an extract from the cultivated re...

The lack of a genetic transformation system that allows integration of a foreign gene into the genome is a serious hindrance to progress in biological research on seaweeds. In contrast, physiological research in seaweeds has a long history of focus on the establishment of cell polarity and multicellularity (Brownlee and Bouget, 1998; Hable and Hart, 2010). Today, nuclear genomes have been recen...

Three size classes of Capitella capitata (Type I ) were fed 4 size ranges of detritus particles derived from red seaweed Gracilaria foliifera. Growth was generally reduced when only the largest particle-size range (150 to 250 pm) was available, and the effect was most pronounced for small worms. Worms lost weight when fed fecal pellets comparable in size to the largest particles of seaweed detr...

Terrestrial plants have proven to be a prolific producer of clinically effective antimalarial drugs, but the antimalarial potential of seaweeds has been little explored. The main aim of this study was to assess the in vitro chemotherapeutical and prophylactic potential of the extracts of twenty-three seaweeds collected from the south coast of England against blood stage (BS) and liver stage (LS...