Chlorophyll a interference in phycocyanin and allophycocyanin spectrophotometric quantification

The accurate quantification of cyanobacteria phycobiliproteins is an important aspect in various research topics, such as cyanobacteria ecology and physiology studies, and especially to calibrate algorithms used in remote sensing of cyanobacterial blooms. Here we present a spectroscopic approach, exploiting spectrophotometric equations, aimed at improving the phycocyanin and allophycocyanin quantification when chlorophyll a is present in the phycobiliprotein aqueous extract.