Synthetic Sources
Nearly all commercial astaxanthin for aquaculture is produced synthetically, with an annual turnover of over $200 million and a selling price of roughly $5000-6000 per kilo as of July 2012. However, synthetic production of astaxanthin is not preferred in some cases because synthetic astaxanthin contains a mixture of stereoisomers. Astaxanthin is fairly abundant and obtainable from natural sources, and some consumers prefer natural products over synthetic ones.
An efficient synthesis from isophorone, cis-3-methyl-2-penten-4-yn-1-ol and a symmetrical C10-dialdehyde has been discovered and is used commercially. It combines these chemicals together with an ethynylation and then a Wittig reaction. Two equivalents of the proper ylide combined with the proper dialdehyde in a solvent of methanol, ethanol, or a mixture of the two, yields astaxanthin in up to 88% yields.
Read more about this topic: Astaxanthin
Famous quotes containing the words synthetic and/or sources:
“In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sap and seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it—and tries to live off philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)