Pleurochrysis carterae is a calcifi ed coccolithophorid species that usually blooms in the coastal area and causes aquaculture losses. The cellular calcifi cation, blooming and many other critical species specifi c eco-physiological processes are closely related to various metabolic pathways. The purpose of this study is to apply the unbiased and non-destructive method of nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR) to detect the unknown holistic metabolite of P. carterae. The results show that NMR spectroscopic method is practical in the analysis of metabolites of phytoplankton. The metabolome of P. carterae was dominated by 26 metabolites involved in a number of dif ferent primary and secondary metabolic pathways. Organic acids and their derivatives, amino acids, sugars, nucleic aides were mainly detected. The abundant metabolites are that closely related to the process of cellular osmotic adjustment, which possibly refl ect the active ability of P. carterae to adapt to the versatile coastal niche. DMSP(dimethylsulphoniopropionate) was the most dominant metabolite in P. carterae, up to 2.065±0.278 mg/g lyophilized cells, followed by glutamate and lactose, the contents were 0.349±0.035 and 0.301±0.073 mg/g lyophilized cells respectively. Other metabolites that had the content ranged between 0.1–0.2 mg/g lyophilized cells were alanine, isethionate and arabinose. Amino acid(valine, phenylalanine, isoleucine, tyrosine), organic acid salts(lactate, succinate), scyllitol and uracil had content ranged from 0.01 to below 0.1 mg/g lyophilized cells. Trigonelline, fumarate and formate were detected in very low content(only thousandths of 1 mg per gram of lyophilized cells or below). Our results of the holistic metabolites of P. carterae are the basic references for the further studies when multiple problems will be addressed to this notorious blooming calcifying species.
