Pigment Extraction from Microalgae

Light-harvesting pigments were extracted by bead beating cells in the presence of acetone. For this, 10 ml of cultured cells was harvested in 2-ml twist cap tubes (Bertin Technologies, USA), and was supplemented with 0.1-and 0.5-mm zirconia/silica beads. Then, 1.5 ml of acetone was added before bead beating was performed at 6,000 rpm for 40 s with a bead beater (Percellys 24, Bertin Technologies). To ensure complete extraction of pigments, bead beating was performed 10 times for each sample until the cell debris turned colorless. To avoid pigment degradation by heat, the samples were cooled on ice after each step. After filtering through a 0.20-μm RC-membrane syringe filter (Sartorius Stedim Biotech, Germany), the extracts were analyzed using HPLC as described in a previous study [15 (link)].