Physical and chemical properties of biodiesel are influenced by structural features of the fatty acids, such as chain length, degree of unsaturation and branching of the carbon chain. This study investigated if microalgal fatty acid profiles are suitable for biodiesel characterization and species selection through Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) and ...

Cold-water coral (CWC) ecosystems occur worldwide and play a major role in the ocean's carbonate budget and atmospheric CO2 balance since the Danian (~65 m.y. ago). However their temporal and spatial evolution against climatic and oceanographic variability is still unclear. For the first time, we combine the main macrofaunal components of a sediment core from a CWC mound of the Melilla Mounds F...

Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata are azooxanthellate corals with nearly cosmopolitan distributions. They form cold-water reefs in the upper bathyal zone on continental margins and offshore banks [A.D. Rogers, Int. Rev. Hydrobiol. 84 (1999) 315]. Lophelia is classified in the family Caryophylliidae and Madrepora in the family Oculinidae, both on the basis of skeletal morphology. Recent mol...

Sponges are abundant, diverse and functionally important organisms of coral reef ecosystems. Sponge-associated microorganisms have been receiving greater attention because of their significant contribution to sponge biomass, biogeochemical cycles and biotechnological potentials. However, our understanding of the sponge microbiome is limited to a few species of sponges from restricted geographic...

Multi-wavelength chlorophyll fluorescence analysis was utilised to examine the photosynthetic efficiency of the biofuel-producing alga Nannochloropsis oculata, grown under two light regimes; low (LL) and high (HL) irradiance levels. Wavelength dependency was evident in the functional absorption cross-section of Photosystem II (σII(λ)), absolute electron transfer rates (ETR(II)), and non-photoch...

Harvesting of algal biomass in biodiesel production involves high energy input and cost incurred process. In order to overcome these problems, bioflocculation process was employed and the efficiency of this process was further improved by the addition of a cationic inducer. In this work marine Bacillus subtilis was used for bioflocculation of Nannochloropsis oculata and ZnCl2 as cationic induce...

Grazing on ultraplankton by the sponge partner of an invertebrate/algal symbiotic association can provide enough particulate organic nitrogen to support the nitrogen needs of both partners. The previously unknown natural diet of the sponge in the Haliclona-Ceratodictyon association consists of bacteria and protozoans, which are rich sources of nitrogen. Retention of ultraplankton varied with se...

A new compound maleimide-5-oxime was isolated, together with 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid, tetillapyrone, from the ethyl acetate extract of the marine sponge Haliclona baeri while tetillapyrone, nortetillapyrone, p-hydroxybenzaldehyde and phenylacetic acid were isolated from the ethyl acetate extract of Haliclona cymaeformis, collected from the Gulf of Thailand. The structures of tetillapyrone and...

This paper reports accurate measurements of the radiation characteristics and optical properties of Nannochloropsis oculata in the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) region. These marine microalgae were grown in 2 cm thick culture bottles with vented caps exposed, on one side, to either white fluorescent light bulbs or red LEDs emitting at 630 nm. The illuminance varied from 2000 to 10,0...