What does spirulina look like?

Arthrospira platensis, aka spirulina, is a helical colony or tricome.  Below are some of the features we use to describe the tricome.

Pitch:  Similar to wavelength.  It is the distance between two peaks in the tricome. The pitch can be between 7-50.  

Colony Length:  The length of the entire colony.  This length is usually 20-300nM.  Harvestable spirulina is usually 60-200nM in length.

Diameter:  This is the width of the individual cells of the tricome.  The diameter is usually 4-7nM.

It is early morning as most of family quietly sleeps...and my son begs for a television show before the sun comes up.   I am up early doing research and doing final edits on the Algae Research Supply Culturing Manual.  While researching lipids, I came across a good review article.  Many of the algae-curious have asked me for information on the cultivation of algae for lipid production.   Some people want to grow algae for biodiesel, others are curious about poly unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) like DHA and EPA.

This article is about extracting lipids and other high value metabolites.  It is from an Open Access journal site:

The citation and link:

Cuellar‐Bermudez, Sara P., et al. "Extraction and purification of high‐value metabolites from microalgae: essential lipids, astaxanthin and phycobiliproteins." Microbial biotechnology 8.2 (2015): 190-209.

If you have questions- drop me a line!  Matthew@algaeresearchsupply.com

Photosynthetically,

Matthew Huber

We are starting up our blog!   Time to start telling stories about algae.