Disputation ceremony for Marie Wekre

On Friday September 1, MSc Marie Emilie Wekre defends her doctoral thesis for the ph.d. degree. You are welcome to sit in to learn about the research project and to follow the scientific discussion!

Vital coordinates: 10.30 in Auditorium 2 (Science Bld).

Extracts from the press release: The world’s population is growing and the demand for new raw materials for food, medicines and other foodstuffs is increasing. Macroalgae, also known as seaweed and kelp, play an important role in marine ecosystems and have great potential for sustainable exploitation. One of several classes of compounds that can be extracted from algae are polyphenols. Polyphenols constitute a large and diverse group of natural molecules that have many positive health effects and serve important functions in reproduction and protection in plants and algae. Much less is known about polyphenols in algae as opposed to land plants. Due to the nature of algae, it is also challenging to extract, isolate and quantify polyphenols from algae.

In this PhD project, improved methods for characterizing polyphenols from seaweed and kelp are developed, and new information on the polyphenol content in macroalgae is shown to be useful for commercial exploitation – as well as of value for chemical ecology and ocean monitoring.