Sea urchins potentially have a rich and valuable life beyond their edible uses.
Imagine if shells and spines from Australian waters could be turned into medical wound healing products, biopharmaceutical products or sustainable dyes and textiles?
Those possibilities are being explored through a partnership between the Mallacoota-based Victorian Sea Urchin Divers’ Association (VSUDA) and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology (CoESB), a $33m national research centre involving nine universities.
One of the centre’s goals is to create higher value from waste products by engineering microbes and enzymes to do things they can’t do in nature in abundance.
In this case, it would be working with pigments and chitosan contained in the urchin shells and spines to explore new products.
Sea urchins play an important role in aquatic ecosystems as some species rely on them for food.
However, there is an overabundance of urchins in many parts of the world, including Australia, and this is affecting the health of kelp forests.
“The project grew out of a visit to Mallacoota by some of the centre researchers who came to explain how synthetic biology can be used to transform waste into value-added products,” VSUDA’s John Minehan said.
“Our hope is that it creates a valuable year-round living that avoids shells and spines simply being discarded.”
Centre researcher Luis Quijano, who has been leading the project, said the project has galvanised interest from potential Australian and European collaborators.
“Working with the Mallacoota divers has been an amazing opportunity,” he said.
“It’s exciting to listen to local communities such as Mallacoota and Baw Baw Shire about their needs, collaborate to tackle significant environmental issues, and find economic solutions that benefit them.
“We see enormous potential for creating biohubs across East Gippsland and regional Victoria, where food and other waste can be turned into high-value products.”
Recently the divers collected samples which they froze and transported to Sydney’s Macquarie University where scientist Dr Sheemal Kumar will grind and process the shells and spines for a series of analytical experiments to unlock the biological secrets.
She said little research has been done on sea urchin biochemistry or the potential for transforming sea urchin waste into higher-value products.
“This presents a rare opportunity for Australian divers, processors and industrial manufacturers and scientists. It is early days in the scientific exploration but early results are promising,” she said.
The researchers will first identify and quantify the Spinochrome pigments.
As a proof of concept, the team will collect enough pigments to create a series of artefacts, including dyes and textiles.
This will be done in collaboration with two Mallacoota artists.
Once the initial data is available, the project team hope to then conduct further research into the viability of new products.
“We have high hopes for this project,” Mr Minehan said.
“Being able to dive all year round and be able to utilise all of the urchin resource for sustainable products would be a game changer.”
