The Cylindrospermopsin Alkaloids - Literature review Example

The presence of CYN in drinking or recreational water poses a serious environmental and health risk. CYN was initially isolated in 1992 following a suspected outbreak in Palm Island; Australia. Since its isolation and classification, various techniques have been used to isolate, detect, analyze and purify Cylindrospermopsin (Moore, Ohtani, and Runnegar 1992).

Some of the common techniques include; High-Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled with Photodiode Array Detector (HPLC-PDA), Enzyme-Linked Immuno-sorbent Assay (ELISA), NMR/Mass Spectrometry (MS), filtration and adsorption techniques among others Masten 2000). This paper shall describe how to grow CYN using bioreactor, analysis using ELISA and HPLC, purification of CYN, and analysis using NMR/MS. Detection of Cylindrospermopsin in the surface water is important since it acts as the major source of drinking and recreational water for a large percentage of people throughout the world.

The Cylindrospermopsins should be constantly removed from the water to prevent contamination from toxins that are known to cause hepatotoxicity among other toxic effects (Fastner et al. 2003). Cylindrospermopsin is produced by various cyanobacteria species commonly known as blue-green-algae which are mostly found in freshwater. Some variants of Cylindrospermopsin raciborskii are commonly found in the U.S., Australia, and Hungary, Umezakia natans isolated in Japan, and Aphanizomenon ovalisporum found in Israel and Australia produce Cylindrospermopsin (Fastner et al. 2003). Human poisoning which occurs through ingestion of water or food contaminated with Cylindrospermopsin producing strains is the most common problem associated with the toxins.

It has been suggested that toxicity by Cylindrospermopsins is majorly mediated through inhibition of protein synthesis which causes loss of liver functioning leading to the death of cells. Use of a bioreactor in growing CYN Bioreactors can be used in the growth and isolation of CYN due to their ability to allow controlled growth of the organism under specific conditions.