Optimising pineapple filtrate assisted cell disruption of wet thraustochytrid biomass for improved lipid extraction

Thraustochytrids, marine protists, are considered an extremely valuable and sustainable source of bioactives, owing to high cellular lipid content featuring high-value polyunsaturated fatty acids, and near infinite renewability. However, bottlenecks in fatty acid processing, relating to energy intensiveness and expensive cell disruption procedures limit widespread exploitation of such lipid sources. An enzymatic approach to thraustochytrid cell disruption using a crude pineapple (Ananas comosus) filtrate was considered for its potential as a clean and green alternative. This involved incubation of thraustochytrid biomass with crude pineapple filtrate under various conditions prior to lipid extraction via organic solvents. Substantial increase in lipid yield (from 46.46% of dry cell weight to 73.43%) was observed when dried biomass was treated with pineapple filtrate at optimal conditions (35 ^⸰C, pH 4 and 100 rpm for 3 h) compared to untreated biomass. The improvement in lipid yield did not alter polyunsaturated fatty acids profile, such as DHA, allowing improved recovery overall. Strikingly this allowed equivalent lipid yield from wet biomass as from dry biomass, eliminating the requirement of freeze-drying. ‘Pineapple filtrate assisted extraction’ was found to be an effective means of enhancing lipid recovery and presents a non-toxic cell disruption methodology.