Exploring nutritional potency and amylase inhibitory effects of protein and lipid from Dunaliella salina

Abstract

Dunaliella salina is a significant microalga known for its biomass, which is rich in various components including carotenoids, carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins. D. salina is composed of protein (39.14 g/100 g), carbohydrate (27.0 g/100 g), and lipid (18.0 g/100 g). The lipid contains fatty acids like α-linolenic acid followed by palmitic acid, 4,7,10,13-hexadecatetranoic acid, linoleic acid, oleic acid, 7,10,13-hexadecatrienoic acid, and palmitoleic acid. The lipid has acceptable levels of saturated fatty acid (SFA), unsaturated fatty acid (UFA), monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA, omega-9, and omega-7), and polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA, omega-3, omega-6). Given the nutritional quality index, fatty acids had a good unsaturation index, peroxidizability index, atherogenicity index, hypocholesteraemia index, nutritive value index, omega-6/omega-3, linoleic acid/linolenic acid index, thrombogenicity index, PUFA/SFA index, and MUFA/SFA index. The protein mainly comprised alanine, glycine, glutamic acid, lysine, proline, leucine, serine, aspartic acid, threonine, arginine, phenylalanine, valine, and tyrosine. The major amino acids were essential amino acids, non-essential amino acids, bitter amino acids, hydrophobic amino acids, sweet amino acids, sulfur amino acids, flavor amino acids, and aromatic amino acids. Ultraviolet-visible absorption and fluorescence quenching represent powerful techniques for tracking conformational alterations in enzymes and interactions between enzymes and inhibitors revealed that protein and lipid hydrolysate interact with amylase and inhibit amylase activity. Therefore, D. salina can be considered a functional food with high nutritional quality and is imperative as an amylase inhibitor for diabetes management.