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• Obata, T
• Schoenefeld, S
• Krahnert, I
• Bergmann, S
• Scheffel, A
• Fernie, AR.
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• Obata, T
• Schoenefeld, S
• Krahnert, I
• Bergmann, S
• Scheffel, A
• Fernie, AR.
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• Obata, T
• Schoenefeld, S
• Krahnert, I
• Bergmann, S
• Scheffel, A
• Fernie, AR.

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Metabolites 2013, 3(1), 168-184; doi:10.3390/metabo3010168

Article

Gas-Chromatography Mass-Spectrometry (GC-MS) Based Metabolite Profiling Reveals Mannitol as a Major Storage Carbohydrate in the Coccolithophorid Alga Emiliania huxleyi

Toshihiro Obata* , Steffi Schoenefeld, Ina Krahnert, Susan Bergmann, André Scheffel and Alisdair R. Fernie

Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Pflanzenphysiologie, Potsdam-Golm 14476, Germany

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 1 February 2013; in revised form: 1 March 2013 / Accepted: 1 March 2013 / Published: 11 March 2013

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Metabolism in Phototrophic Prokaryotes and Algae)

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Abstract: Algae are divergent organisms having a wide variety of evolutional histories. Although most of them share photosynthetic activity, their pathways of primary carbon metabolism are rather diverse among species. Here we developed a method for gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) based metabolite profiling for the coccolithophorid alga Emiliania huxleyi, which is one of the most abundant microalgae in the ocean, in order to gain an overview of the pathway of primary metabolism within this alga. Following method optimization, twenty-six metabolites could be detected by this method. Whilst most proteogenic amino acids were detected, no peaks corresponding to malate and fumarate were found. The metabolite profile of E. huxleyi was, however, characterized by a prominent accumulation of mannitol reaching in excess of 14 nmol 10⁶ cells⁻¹. Similarly, the accumulation of the ¹³C label during short term H¹³CO₃⁻ feeding revealed a massive redistribution of label into mannitol as well as rapid but saturating label accumulation into glucose and several amino acids including aspartate, glycine and serine. These results provide support to previous work suggesting that this species adopts C₃ photosynthesis and that mannitol functions as a carbon store in E. huxleyi.

Keywords: coccolithophorid; Emiliania huxleyi; metabolite profiling; GC-MS; primary carbon metabolism; mannitol; isotope labelling

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