The detection of harmful algae is obviously of great economic importance to leisure, tourism and fisheries world–wide. Yet there are no robust techniques that may be deployed in the field for the routine assay of harmful algae in water samples. A number of seemingly promising avenues have been explored in recent years from HPLC to flow cytometry, working on the detection of specific poisons, or...

For more than 50 years, organic chemists have been interested in the novel chemical structures and biological activities of marine natural products, which are organic compounds that can be used for chemical defense and chemical communication by diverse marine organisms. Chemical ecology, the study of the natural ecological functions of these compounds, is an interdisciplinary field involving ch...

Ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) is a common foodborne disease related to the consumption of subtropical and tropical marine finfish which have accumulated naturally occurring toxins through their diet. The concerned –ciguatoxic -fish are either feeding on small algae species known as dinoflagellates or feeding on toxic herbivore fish. The main toxic dinoflagellate is Gambierdicus toxicus which i...

Viruses specific to marine eukaryotic algae (phycoviruses) and cyanobacteria (cyanophages) are now recognised as ubiquitous in the world’s oceans and specificity has been determined for many species of both microand macroalgae. Algae have evolved mechanical, chemical and genetic defences against infection, however viruses potentially regulate several metabolic processes in marine plants. Virus-...

A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system for pigment analysis of marine phytoplankton was established. The characteristic quantification limits of the major photosynthetic chlorophylls a and b were 0.29 and 0.27 ng, respectively. The reliability of this method was verified by resolving the marker pigments in culture extracts from diatoms, blue-green algae and green algae. Fucoxant...

Species richness patterns are remarkably similar across many marine taxa, yet explanations of how such patterns are generated and maintained are conflicting. I use published occurrence data to identify previously masked latitudinal and longitudinal diversity gradients for all genera of benthic marine macroalgae and for species in the Order Bryopsidales. I also quantify the size, location, and o...

For many years marine algae has been subject of numerous researches and as a source of natural products with antiviral activity, such as terpenes, alkaloids and sulphated polysaccharides. However, the anti-Zika virus (ZIKV) potential of algae has not been studied. In this study we evaluated extracts seven species of the three major classes of seaweeds (Phaeophyceae, Chlorophyceae and Rhodophyce...

The discharge of heavy metals into aquatic ecosystem has become a matter of concern in South Africa over the last few decades. These pollutants are introduced into the aquatic systems significantly as a result of various industrial operations. Conventional methods for metal removal such as ion exchange, reverse osmosis, etc. have proven to be expensive. Due to the increasing awareness of ecolog...

Photosynthesis, Dark Fixation, /?-Carboxylation, C4-Metabolism, Brown Algae Marine brown macroalgae including Macrocystis integrifolia, Nereocystis luetkeana, Lessoniopsis littoralis, Laminaria saccharina, Fucus serratus and some further representatives of the Laminariales and Fucales (Phaeophyta) have been investigated with respect to their remarkably high potential for /?-carboxylation of pho...