Evaluation Of Antimutagenic Effects Of Three Phytochemicals

Chlorophyll, lycopene and genistein are three common phytochemicals in human diets. Because of their biological activities, these chemicals have been widely used as materials for drug and healthy food. Recent researches indicated that these crude phytochemicals might have antimutagenic effects at different doses. In this study, antimutagenic effects of chlorophyll, lycopene, genistein were tested by TK gene mutation test and comet assay with TK6 human lymphoid cells for two purposes. One purpose is to provide safety evidence for using these phytochemicals to drug and healthy food, and to accumulate data for further use of TK gene mutation test in evaluating the safety of chemicals. And the other is to validate the feasibility of application of TK gene mutation test to evaluate antimutagenic effects and broaden its application field.In the TK gene mutation test, TK6 cells were exposed respectively to chlorophyll (at concentrations 10, 20, 40, 80 μg/ml), lycopene (at concentrations 5, 10, 20, 40 μg/ml) and genistein (at concentrations 0.625, 1.25, 2.5, 5 μg/ml) simultaneously with 0.5μg/ml MMC for 3 hours without S9. Cytotoxicity, plating efficiency and mutant frequency were detected using the microwell method. The results showed the mutant frequency decreased significantly compared with the MMC control when the concentration of chlorophyll arrived at 40μg/ml (P<0.05), the concentration of lycopene arrived at 20μg/ml (P<0.05) and the concentration of genistein arrived at 0.625μg/ml.In comet assay, TK6 cells were exposed respectively to chlorophyll (at...