Search Results (11)

Due to their inability to biodegrade, petroleum-based plastics pose significant environmental challenges by disrupting aquatic, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems. Additionally, the widespread presence of microplastics and nanoplastics induces serious health risks for humans and animals. These pressing issues create an urgent need for designing and developing eco-friendly, biodegradable, renewable, and non-toxic plastic alternatives. To this end, agro-industrial byproducts such as soyhulls, which contain 29–50% lignocellulosic residue, are handy. This study extracted lignocellulosic residue from soyhulls using alkali treatment, dissolved it in ZnCl₂ solution, and crosslinked it with calcium ions and glycerol to create biodegradable films. The film formulation was optimized using the Box–Behnken design, with response to tensile strength (TS), elongation at break (EB), and water vapor permeability (WVP). The optimized films were further characterized for color, light transmittance, UV-blocking capacity, water absorption, contact angle, and biodegradability. The resulting optimized film demonstrated a tensile strength of 10.4 ± 1.0 MPa, an elongation at break of 9.4 ± 1.8%, and a WVP of 3.5 ± 0.4 × 10⁻¹¹ g·m⁻¹·s⁻¹·Pa⁻¹. Importantly, 90% of the film degrades within 37 days at 24% soil moisture. This outcome underscores the potential of soyhull-derived films as a sustainable, innovative alternative to plastic packaging, contributing to the circular economy and generating additional income for farmers and allied industries. Full article

The aquatic environment encompasses a wide variety of pollutants, from plastics to drug residues, pesticides, food compounds, and other food by-products, and improper disposal of waste is the main cause of the accumulation of toxic substances in water. Monitoring, assessing, and attempting to control the effects of contaminants in the aquatic environment are necessary and essential to protect the environment and thus human and animal health, and the study of aquatic ecotoxicology has become topical. In this respect, zebrafish are used as model organisms to study the bioaccumulation, toxicity, and influence of environmental pollutants due to their structural, functional, and material advantages. There are many similarities between the metabolism and physiological structures of zebrafish and humans, and the nervous system structure, blood–brain barrier function, and social behavior of zebrafish are characteristics that make them an ideal animal model for studying neurotoxicity. The aim of the study was to highlight the neurotoxicity of nanoplastics, microplastics, fipronil, deltamethrin, and rotenone and to highlight the main behavioral, histological, and oxidative status changes produced in zebrafish exposed to them. Full article

Society and consumers are increasingly concerned about food safety and the sustainability of food production systems. A significant amount of by-products and discards are generated during the processing of aquatic animals, which still needs to be fully utilized by the food industry. The management and sustainable use of these resources are essential to avoiding environmental pollution and resource waste. These by-products are rich in biologically active proteins, which can be converted into peptides by enzymatic hydrolysis or fermentation treatment. Therefore, exploring the extraction of collagen peptides from these by-products using an enzymatic hydrolysis technology has attracted a wide range of attention from numerous researchers. Collagen peptides have been found to possess multiple biological activities, including antioxidant, anticancer, antitumor, hypotensive, hypoglycemic, and anti-inflammatory properties. These properties can enhance the physiological functions of organisms and make collagen peptides useful as ingredients in food, pharmaceuticals, or cosmetics. This paper reviews the general methods for extracting collagen peptides from various processing by-products of aquatic animals, including fish skin, scales, bones, and offal. It also summarizes the functional activities of collagen peptides as well as their applications. Full article

The antioxidant activity of protein-derived peptides was one of the first to be revealed among the more than 50 known peptide bioactivities to date. The exploitation value associated with food-derived antioxidant peptides is mainly attributed to their natural properties and effectiveness as food preservatives and in disease prevention, management, and treatment. An increasing number of antioxidant active peptides have been identified from a variety of renewable sources, including terrestrial and aquatic organisms and their processing by-products. This has important implications for alleviating population pressure, avoiding environmental problems, and promoting a sustainable shift in consumption. To identify such opportunities, we conducted a systematic literature review of recent research advances in food-derived antioxidant peptides, with particular reference to their biological effects, mechanisms, digestive stability, and bioaccessibility. In this review, 515 potentially relevant papers were identified from a preliminary search of the academic databases PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus. After removing non-thematic articles, articles without full text, and other quality-related factors, 52 review articles and 122 full research papers remained for analysis and reference. The findings highlighted chemical and biological evidence for a wide range of edible species as a source of precursor proteins for antioxidant-active peptides. Food-derived antioxidant peptides reduce the production of reactive oxygen species, besides activating endogenous antioxidant defense systems in cellular and animal models. The intestinal absorption and metabolism of such peptides were elucidated by using cellular models. Protein hydrolysates (peptides) are promising ingredients with enhanced nutritional, functional, and organoleptic properties of foods, not only as a natural alternative to synthetic antioxidants. Full article

Technological and economic development have influenced the amount of post-production waste. Post-industrial waste, generated in the most considerable amount, includes, among others, waste related to the mining, metallurgical, and energy industries. Various non-hazardous or hazardous wastes can be used to produce new construction materials after the “solidification/stabilization” processes. They can be used as admixtures or raw materials. However, the production of construction materials from various non-hazardous or hazardous waste materials is still very limited. In our opinion, special attention should be paid to waste containing fluoride, and the reuse of solid waste containing fluoride is a high priority today. Fluoride is one of the few trace elements that has received much attention due to its harmful effects on the environment and human and animal health. In addition to natural sources, industry, which discharges wastewater containing F− ions into surface waters, also increases fluoride concentration in waters and pollutes the environment. Therefore, developing effective and robust technologies to remove fluoride excess from the aquatic environment is becoming extremely important. This review aims to cover a wide variety of procedures that have been used to remove fluoride from drinking water and industrial wastewater. In addition, the ability to absorb fluoride, among others, by industrial by-products, agricultural waste, and biomass materials were reviewed. Full article

Tritium is a byproduct of many radiochemical reactions in the nuclear industry, and its effects on aquatic organisms, particularly low-dose effects, deserve special attention. The low-dose effects of tritium on aquatic microbiota have been intensively studied using luminous marine bacteria as model microorganisms. Low-dose physiological activation has been demonstrated and explained by the signaling role of reactive oxygen species through the “bystander effect” in bacterial suspensions. The activation of microbial functions in natural reservoirs by low tritium concentrations can cause unpredictable changes in food chains and imbalances in the natural equilibrium. The incorporation of tritium from the free form into organically bound compounds mainly occurs in the dark and at a temperature of 25 °C. When tritium is ingested by marine animals, up to 56% of tritium is accumulated in the muscle tissue and up to 36% in the liver. About 50% of tritium in the liver is bound in non-exchangeable forms. Human ingestion of water and food products contaminated with background levels of tritium does not significantly contribute to the total dose load on the human body. Full article

The Taiwan Tilapia is an important aquaculture product in Taiwan. The aquatic by-products generated during Tilapia processing, such as fish bones and skin, are rich in minerals and protein. We aimed to explore the effect of a dietary supplement, comprising a mixture of fermented Tilapia by-products and Monostroma nitidum oligosaccharides as the raw materials, combined with physical training on exercise performance and fatigue. We used a mouse model that displays a phenotype of accelerated aging. Male senescence-accelerated mouse prone-8 (SAMP8) mice were divided into two control groups—with or without physical training—and supplemented with different doses (0.5 times: 412 mg/kg body weight (BW)/day; 1 time: 824 mg/kg BW/day; 2 times: 1648 mg/kg BW/day) of fermented Tilapia by-products and Monostroma nitidum oligosaccharide-containing mixture and combined with exercise training groups. Exercise performance was determined by testing forelimb grip strength and with a weight-bearing exhaustive swimming test. Animals were sacrificed to collect physical fatigue-related biomarkers. Mice dosed at 824 or 1648 mg/kg BW/day showed improvement in their exercise performance (p < 0.05). In terms of biochemical fatigue indicators, supplementation of 824 or 1648 mg/kg BW/day doses of test substances could effectively reduce blood urea nitrogen concentration and lactate concentration and increase the lactate ratio (p < 0.05) and liver glycogen content post-exercise (p < 0.05). Based on the above results, the combination of physical training and consumption of a dietary supplementation mixture of fermented Tilapia by-products and Monostroma nitidum oligosaccharides could improve the exercise performance of mice and help achieve an anti-fatigue effect. Full article

During recent decades, consumers have been continuously moving towards the substitution of synthetic ingredients of the food industry by natural products, obtained from vegetal, animal or microbial sources. Additionally, a circular economy has been proposed as the most efficient production system since it allows for reducing and reutilizing different wastes. Current agriculture is responsible for producing high quantities of organic agricultural waste (e.g., discarded fruits and vegetables, peels, leaves, seeds or forestall residues), that usually ends up underutilized and accumulated, causing environmental problems. Interestingly, these agri-food by-products are potential sources of valuable bioactive molecules such as tannins. Tannins are phenolic compounds, secondary metabolites of plants widespread in terrestrial and aquatic natural environments. As they can be found in plenty of plants and herbs, they have been traditionally used for medicinal and other purposes, such as the leather industry. This fact is explained by the fact that they exert plenty of different biological activities and, thus, they entail a great potential to be used in the food, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, this review article is directed towards the description of the biological activities exerted by tannins as they could be further extracted from by-products of the agri-food industry to produce high-added-value products. Full article

The vast majority of the world’s fishery by-products are utilized in the fish farming industry. However, due to the high cost and unsustainability of these by-products, alternative sources must be found. Marine diatoms produce important amounts of fatty acids, sterols, proteins and carbohydrates. In this work, we assessed the nutritional value of Halamphora coffeaeformis at the exponential growth phase, to determine its suitability for aquafeed. The strain was grown in a photobioreactor at 20 °C for 6 days. The production of proteins, lipids and carbohydrates was determined, and essential fatty acid, sterol and amino acid composition was assessed. The highest values of triacylglycerides (TAG), free and esterified sterols, proteins and carbohydrates were found after 6 days of growth in the photobioreactor. Fatty acid analysis by gas chromatography showed the presence of eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and arachidonic (ARA) in amounts similar to those for fish oils. In terms of sterols, a predominance of stigmasterol was observed, followed by cholesterol. The amino acid composition revealed 50% of them to be among those essential for fish and other aquatic animals. Finally, a suitable amount of carbohydrates was found in H. coffeaeformis cultures. Together, these findings support the use of H. coffeaeformis as an alternative and sustainable source for aquafeed to partially replace the use of fishery by-products. Full article

Preparation of biodiesel using in situ transesterification has been extensively conducted for agricultural, microbial and algal biomass, while few works have been performed using aquatic animal tissue. In this work, fish processing wastes were collected to perform in situ transesterification using grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idellus) biomass as a representative with which to optimize the reaction conditions. Under the optimum condition, the highest biodiesel purity reached up to 100% for sea bass wastes, which is higher than the 96.5% specified in the EN 14214-2008. The in situ method proposed here has the potential to save significant costs in biodiesel production compared to conventional methods, which usually require high-cost pretreatment of the raw materials. Additionally, the waste residue byproduct produced has a high protein content, and therefore the potential to be used for high-protein feed. This study is expected to inspire new strategies to prepare biodiesel and high-protein feed simultaneously from aquatic animal biomass using the novel in situ transesterification. Full article

Biologically active compounds with different modes of action, such as, antiproliferative, antioxidant, antimicrotubule, have been isolated from marine sources, specifically algae and cyanobacteria. Recently research has been focused on peptides from marine animal sources, since they have been found as secondary metabolites from sponges, ascidians, tunicates, and mollusks. The structural characteristics of these peptides include various unusual amino acid residues which may be responsible for their bioactivity. Moreover, protein hydrolysates formed by the enzymatic digestion of aquatic and marine by-products are an important source of bioactive peptides. Purified peptides from these sources have been shown to have antioxidant activity and cytotoxic effect on several human cancer cell lines such as HeLa, AGS, and DLD-1. These characteristics imply that the use of peptides from marine sources has potential for the prevention and treatment of cancer, and that they might also be useful as molecular models in anticancer drug research. This review focuses on the latest studies and critical research in this field, and evidences the immense potential of marine animals as bioactive peptide sources. Full article