Standard Presentation (15 mins) - Edits Required Australian Marine Sciences Association 2022

Purification and identification of saponins produced by Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (#284)

Stuart J Smith 1 , Cherie A Motti 2 , Scott F Cummins 1 , Tianfang Wang 1
  1. University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QUEENSLAND, Australia
  2. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia

Asteroids have been shown to produce a great diversity of unique secondary metabolites, including a wide variety of saponins. Elucidation of saponins from asteroids has shown that each species produces a unique repertoire of saponin structures. During my PhD thesis research, I have utilized the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish to evaluate existing and novel saponin purification and identification methods. The outcomes have demonstrated the differences between traditional liquid-liquid partitioning, column chromatography and membrane diffusion. Additionally, this research has identified saponins present in the conditioned CoTS water, which may lead to the development of a CoTS-specific biosensor techniques.