Seaweeds represent useful and promising source of bioactive compounds used in medicine or industry [1, 2]. One of these compounds are carrageenans, which are useful as heparin analogues due to their sulphate groups. Carrageenans are extracted mostly from red seaweed species such as Kappaphycus alvarezii, Chondrus crispus or Furcellaria lumbricalis [2, 3]. This work is focused on MALDI TOF and MALDI TOF/TOF analysis of Furcellaria lumbricalis samples. Primary goal of this work is to obtain and identify signals characteristic for the carrageenans.

Samples of Furcellaria lumbricalis were prepared by hydrolysis with trifluoroacetic acid. Samples were subjected to reverse phase SPE columns. After the elimination of contaminants, seaweed hydrolysates were concentrated, reconstituted in small amount of water and analysed by UltrafleXtreme MALDI TOF/TOF mass spectrometer with addition DHB as a matrix.

In the hydrolysate samples of Furcellaria lumbricalis were observed signals of β-carrageenan (hexose dimer) and κ-carrageenan (sulphated dimer). In the mass spectra were also identified signals for µ-carrageenan and ξ-carrageenan (disulphated dimer for both structures). The presence of double sulphated carrageenan structures was confirmed by MALDI TOF/TOF fragmentation analysis.

This work was financed by the State programs # 2003SP200280203 and 2003SP200280301 and the Slovak Grant Agency VEGA projects # 2/0022/18 and 2/0130/18; Ministry of Health of Slovak Republic under the project number 2019/7-CHÚ SAV-4; and Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-18-0336.

[1] TORRES, M. D., FLÓREZ-FERNÁNDEZ, N., DOMÍNGUEZ, H., (2019), Mar Drugs, 17 (6), Integral Utilization of Red Seaweed for Bioactive Production.
[2] NASERI, A., HOLDT, S. L., JACOBSEN, CH., (2019), Journal of Aquatic Food Product Technology, 28 (9), p. 967 – 973, Biochemical and Nutritional Composition of Industrial Red Seaweed Used in Carrageenan Production.
[3] ŠIMKOVIC, I., (2013), Carbohydrate Polymers, 95, p. 697-715, Unexplored possibilities of all-polysaccharide composites.