β-cryptoxanthin (β-CX) is a kind of carotenoids contained in Satsuma mandarin (Citrus unshiu Marc.) and has many health-promoting effects such as the visceral fat reduction, the preventive effect on osteoporosis, and the effect to improve bloodstream. On the other hand, there is a report that deep seawater (DSW) accelerates the absorption of vitamin C by the cells. We investigated the effect of DSW on the absorption of β-CX by a human intestinal model using Caco-2 cells. We found that DSW accelerated the absorption of β-CX by Caco-2 cell remarkably. It is suggested that DSW accelerates the expression of a carotenoid transporter gene, SR-B1. It is also suggested that β-CX is absorbed through SR-B1, because the absorption of β-CX was suppressed by a specific inhibitor of SR-B1 receptor, BLT-1. It is suggested that the accelerative effect to absorb β-CX is specific to DSW, because this effect was not observed by using surface seawater (SSW) .

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Until recent years, marine bacterial researches have been conducted mainly on surface seawater (SSW) and marine sediment, but only few studies have been undertaken on deep-sea water (DSW). Therefore, in this study, bacterial community structures of DSW and SSW collected from seven DSW pumping stations in Japan were investigated by molecular biological techniques using a 454 FLX sequencer. The result of pyrosequencing analysis showed that the bacterial diversity of DSW was considerably higher than that of SSW as we studied before. The proportions of several phyla (Actinobacteria, Chloroexi, Gemmatimonadetes, and SAR046) in DSW were higher than those in SSW. In addition, principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) based on the pyrosequencing data showed that DSW samples tended to form clusters separated from those of SSW samples. These results indicate that the bacterial community structure of DSW is dierent from that of SSW and there are various bacteria adapting in DSW environment, which differ from those in SSW. Therefore, DSW is believed to contain novel bacteria not found in SSW as a source for finding novel bioactive compounds.

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