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Anti-aging Substance Using Domestic Seed Bacteria
Office of Information | 2018-07-27 | 조회 4299
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Astaxanthin is known to inhibit the active oxygen that causes aging. The substance has an antioxidant capacity of 65 times that of vitamin C, 54 times that of beta-carotene and 14 times that of vitamin E in the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) evaluation. The International Journal of Phytotherapy referred to astaxanthin as "the god of antioxidants".
It is known to be effective not only in anti-aging but also in protecting eyesight, improving immunity, preventing cardiovascular disease, increasing fertility of sperm, and anti-inflammation.
Recently, it has been confirmed that astaxanthin can be mass-produced in hematococcus, a unicellular microalgae. However, it is expected that a large amount of costly outflow will be generated when using the offspring according to the Nagoya Protocol*, so the industrialization of astaxanthin was in urgent need.
* The Nagoya Protocol: an international agreement to share benefits from the newly developed genetic resources with the source country. It will take effect on South Korea on August 17 after a one-year grace period.
A research team led by Professor Chang-hee Hong (Semiconductor Science and Technology) is attracting attention by developing an ‘LED container system’ that can mass-produce high quality astaxanthin using domestic seed bacteria, in collaboration with the local company, Astabio.
It is expected that the team will secure South Korea’s status as a hematococcus seed exporting country by mass-producing astaxanthin through utilizing ten kinds of domestic seeds including hematococcus, which has a high content of astaxanthin in cells.
The seed hematococcus which the team will produce using LED light contains over 5% of astaxanthin, more than twice as high as the 2% level of astaxanthin in the cells of general domestic seed bacteria, and even higher than that of ‘NIES-144’ (3.5%), one of the most representative seeds in the world.
In addition, Hong’s team has built an intelligent, standardized system to produce hematococcus anywhere in the world without being restricted by environment, place, and time, even in case of abnormal climate change, by applying the fourth industrial revolution elements technology such as IoT and big data in the container.
“We’ve fully tested the container-based IoT photochemical culturing system producing astaxanthin and secured domestic seeds for industrialization,” Professor Hong said. “We expect 20 tons of annual production and 7 million dollars of sales with domestic and overseas demand companies such as Vietnam.”