Since , she has held a position as director of research at the CNRS, where she has specialized in phytochemistry and metabolomics profiling. Her main research interests include marine plant secondary chemistry and chemical ecology.
Most of her recent work focuses on structural elucidation and role of polyphenols, seagrass chemosystematics, commercial and environmental applications of seagrass and algae detrital material as a source of high value-added natural marine products.
Bernadette Rezzonico is currently a research technician in the field of natural marine products at the University of Bordeaux. She is mainly interested in the application of environmentally friendly extraction and purification techniques and the development of qualitative and quantitative methods with analytical techniques, mainly NMR and HPLC.
The phenolic fingerprint of the leaves of Posidonia oceanica collected from four different Mediterranean Sea regions was determined using a panel of analytical techniques. It was found to be dominated by caffeic tartrates, along with low amounts of coumaric and ferulic tartrates. Chicoric acid CA was unambiguously identified as the major phenolic compound, regardless of the sample or collection site.
Caftaric acid CAF was the second most abundant phenolic, but in much lower average concentrations. These results contrast with most of the previous works, in which CA was not even mentioned. The dramatic influence of extract handling, as well as the importance of choosing the adequate criteria of identity to standards, was demonstrated.
