Margarida MartinsUniversity of Aveiro | UA · CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials
Margarida Martins
PhD in Chemical Engineering
About
35
Publications
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Introduction
Margarida did research in CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials (University of Aveiro) in the fields of Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering and Chemical Biology. She was involved in different international projects during her master thesis, research grant and PhD thesis in the development of sustainable and cost effective processes of extraction and purification of biomolecules from biomass.
Publications
Publications (35)
BACKGROUND
Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is used extensively as a biomarker due to its unique spectral and fluorescence characteristics. GFP is usually obtained from recombinant strains of Escherichia coli ( E. coli ) producing the protein intracellularly. However, the common methods of extraction are cumbersome leading to an increase in the down...
In the last few decades, interest in primary and secondary metabolites from seaweeds has increased due to their high potential in important fields such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. In this context, the development of processes of extraction and purification that overcome the principal disadvantages of conventional methodologies is of utmost im...
Pigments, such as chlorophylls and carotenoids, have important applications in various fields, such as colorants in food, cosmetic or textile industries and in biomedical applications. Both pigments have an important role in the photosynthetic process and can be found in the marine green macroalgae genus Ulva. In this work, an integrated downstream...
BACKGROUND
When the human population increases, so does the need to explore a wider range of feedstocks and biomasses, such as cyanobacteria. However, a deeper understanding of the growth patterns and pigment production is required to support the selection of the most beneficial species and conditions for industrial production. The growth and pigme...
Bio-Based Solar Energy Harvesting
In article number 2104801 by Sandra F.H. Correia, Paulo S. André, Rute A.S. Ferreira, and co-workers, a proof-of-concept for a solar optical thermal sensor based on sustainable aqueous solutions operating in the Internet of Things field is demonstrated. This self-powered system can estimate temperature and send thr...
The Internet of Things (IoT) fosters the development of smart city systems for sustainable living and increases comfort for people. One of the current challenges for sustainable buildings is the optimization of energy management. Temperature monitoring in buildings is of prime importance, as heating account for a great part of the total energy cons...
BACKGROUND
Natural products are currently in the spotlight due to the increasing awareness of consumers. Among these products is phycocyanin (C‐PC), a blue colorant that can be extracted from cyanobacteria – a poorly explored feedstock – and applied in several fields, due to its argued health benefits. Arthropira (previously called Spirulina) is th...
There is a need for handy and fast techniques to purify biomolecules, increasing their stability and value, because the separation units are current bottlenecks in downstream processes. Solid-phase extraction is a technique that enables the purification of a compound by its adsorption from a liquid matrix. The AmberLite™ HPR900 OH resin allows the...
There is a strong industrial interest in the development of greener and more sustainable processes based on the use of renewable resources, and a biorefinery based on marine resources, such as macroalgae, stands as a major opportunity toward that end. In this work, Saccharina latissima (Linnaeus), a brown macroalga, was used as a source of pigments...
The sustainable cellular delivery of the pleiotropic drug curcumin encounters drawbacks related to its fast autoxidation at the physiological pH, cytotoxicity of delivery vehicles and poor cellular uptake. A biomaterial compatible with curcumin and with the appropriate structure to allow the correct curcumin encapsulation considering its poor solub...
Phycobiliproteins are fluorescent proteins mainly produced by red macroalgae and cyanobacteria. These proteins, essential to the survival of these organisms, find application in many fields of interest, from medical, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic to food and textile industries. The biggest obstacle to their use is the lack of simple environmental an...
Deep eutectic solvents as efficient solvents to extract and purify collagen from codfish skins.
This review will discuss, under the Circular Economy and Biorefinery concepts, the performance of the alternative solvents in the downstream process to recover natural pigments in a more sustainable way. Conventionally, pigments marketed on an industrial scale are produced through chemical synthesis by using petroleum derivatives as the main raw ma...
The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a biomolecule used in many biological applications such as biomarkers and biosensors, which require high purity levels. It is usually obtained from recombinant Escherichia coli strains, which also produces other endogenous proteins, demanding multiple purification steps, and consequently, increasing the overal...
Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are biodegradable plastics of microbial origin, whose biodegradability and thermochemical properties make them greener alternatives to conventional plastics. Despite their high industrial potential, the PHAs’ high production costs still hinder their application. Mixed microbial biomass combined with agro-industrial wast...
Cyanobacteria are attracting the attention worldwide as a reliable and sustainable feedstock for the production of biofuels, food colorants and biochemically active compounds. Anabaena cylindrica (A. cylindrica) is a cyanobacterium with a significant widespread occurrence in Portuguese freshwaters, with phycocyanin and chlorophylls, compounds with...
The poor photo-chemical stability of R-phycoerythrin (R-PE) has beena bottleneck for its broad-spectrum applications. Inspired by nature, a sustainable strategy of protein co-habitation to enhance the R-PE stability by embedding it in a solid matrix of gelatin, was here studied. Both pure R-PE and fresh phycobiliproteins (PBPs) extracts recovered f...
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are a solution to overcome the mismatch between solar cells absorption and the solar spectrum, facilitating the integration of photovoltaic (PV) devices into the urban environment, since they can be incorporated in building façades and windows. Challenges include the search for environmentally friendly materia...
In this work, an approach to integrate the downstream processing of bioactive compounds present in the microalgae cells by combining the use of tensioactive compounds and aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) is proposed. For this purpose, several aqueous solutions using solvents with and without tensioactive nature were investigated on their capacity to...
Aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) are biocompatible systems applied in the extraction of biomolecules. Despite the biocompatibility of polymers and, particularly polyethylene glycol (PEG), to form ABS, their limitation in terms of phase separation is recognized. A new approach was recently proposed based on the use of ionic liquids (ILs) as adjuvants...
In this work, the extraction and purification of carotenoids from the fruit Bactris gasipaes was developed. Ethanolic and aqueous solutions of ionic liquids (ILs), and surfactants were evaluated on the extraction of these pigments. Thus, we developed an optimized sustainable downstream process mediated by the best solvent with further isolation of...
BACKGROUND
The demand for colorants from natural bio‐based sources is increasing. Violacein is a natural purple‐blue hydrophobic pigment with interesting bioactivity whose expression in genetically modified Yarrowia lipolytica production was successfully achieved.
RESULTS
In this work, several surfactants were tested in the extraction of violacein...
R-phycoerythrin is a high added-value protein found in red macroalgae with several interesting properties. Despite the promissing results found when R-phycoerythrin is used as an optically active center in luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), it still has some problems that can be attributed to the low stability of the R-phycoerythrin in presenc...
Twelve surface‐active ionic liquids (SAILs) and surface‐active derivatives, based on imidazolium, ammonium, and phosphonium cations and containing one, or more, long alkyl chains in the cation and/or the anion, were synthetized and characterized. The aggregation behavior of these SAILs in water, as well as their adsorption at solution/air interface...
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are photovoltaic (PV) complementary devices to overcome the mismatch between the Si‐based PV cells, response and the solar spectrum, allowing PV urban integration. Challenges for the luminescent layer include the use of abundant and sustainable natural organic molecules. Here, LSCs composed of a glass containe...
Natural extracts, like those obtained from medicinal herbs, dietary plants and fruits are being recognized as important sources of bioactive compounds with several functionalities including antioxidant, anticancer, and antimicrobial activities. Plant extracts rich in phenolic antioxidants are currently being successfully used for several pharmaceut...
Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) has excellent properties as biosensor and biomarker, however, its widespread use is limited by its purification costs. Alternative low-cost purification techniques can overcome this issue. The aim of this work was to evaluate aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) composed of cholinium chloride ([Ch]Cl) and different polymer...
Lignin-based materials and chemicals represent a huge potential of added-value compounds for biorefineries, but the difficulty to fractionate the heterogeneity of phenolic compounds, resulting from the lignin depolymerisation, still remains a challenge. Herein, a set of polymer-based aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) consisting of sodium polyacrylate...
Bioactive compounds extracted from natural renewable sources have attracted increased interest from both industry and academia. Several biocompounds are present in red macroalgae, among which R-phycoerythrin (R-PE), which is a phycobiliprotein with a wide range of applications. The major drawback associated with it is the absence of an efficient, l...