Geno-Toxic Appraisal of Widely Used Food Color Additives on Model Plant Allium cepa Root Tip Cells

Abstract

Azo dyes are consisted of nitrogen and carbon atom having R-N= N-R' functional group in which Rs is usually aryl. The delocalization of aryl gives vivid colors such as red, orange, and yellow. It is usually produced by an electrophilic substitution reaction of an aryl diazotization with acetoacetic amide or aromatic amines (Clarke and Kirner, 1941), which are well documented carcinogenic and mutagenic agents (Khan et al., 2020).Several studies have been conducted on the nature and characterization of azo dyes which presented a higher level of cytotoxicity on plants cells, severe allergic reactions in humans, and even cancer in lab-tested animals than any other synthetic FCAs (Rangan and Barcelous, 2009;Micic et al., 2014;Kaur et al., Abstract | The frequent use of meal and beverages having food color additives (FCAs) may cause mutation in humans' proto-oncogenes which leads to carcinogenicity. The current findings aimed to evaluate the genotoxic impact of widely used azo FCAs on the cell cycle by using onion as a model plant. The study was designed in a complete randomized design where the grown onion roots were exposed to 0%, 0.001%, 0.01%, 0.1%, and 1% concentration of FCA for 120 hours for macroscopic and 36 h for microscopic evaluation. The onion root tips morpho-physiology was severely affected as the concentration of FCAs increased. The macroscopic analysis manifested that allura red had 95% broken-ended extremely thin and transparent root tips at 1% concentration. In the microscopic analysis, FCAs induced eight different kinds of chromosomal aberrations in which allura red significantly induced the highest frequencies of abnormal prophase, sticky metaphase, c-mitosis, sticky anaphase, and laggard anaphase at each concentration. While, dislocated metaphase, forwarded anaphase, and bridge anaphase were only found in sunset yellow, tartrazine, and fast green, respectively. The use of evaluated FCAs especially allura red in foodstuff, cosmetics, and skincare products can cause cancer in humans.

Effects of Indigo Carmine on Growth, Cell Division, and Morphology of Allium cepa L. Root Tip

“…Among the substances tested on Allium cepa are dyes, metals, pesticides, and aromatic hydrocarbons [ 54 ]. Also, the Allium test has been used to identify the genotoxicity of some food dyes: metanil yellow, carmoisine [ 58 ], allura red (E129), sunset yellow (E110), fast green (E143), and tartrazine (E102) [ 59 ]. Therefore, the Allium test is a valuable in vivo model to study the cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of pollutants in water, soil, and air, as well as other chemical substances [ 51 , 53 , 60 ].…”

Evaluation of cytogenotoxic effect of potassium acetate on Allium cepa L. root tips

“…Many researchers used the Allium cepa L as a test system to test mutagenic or the anti-mutagenic effects of different food additives, chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides. For instance, a research by Farheen and colleagues in 2021 investigated the genotoxic effects of four food color additives on the model plant Allium cepa root tip cells (Farheen et al, 2021). In 2012, Onyemaobi and colleagues tested the cytogenetic effects of food preservatives, sodium meta-bisulfate, and sodium benzoate on the root tips of Allium cepa L. A recent study by Yalçin and Çavuşoğlu in 2022 investigated the toxicity of potassium bromate in Allium cepa root tip meristematic Hussein cells.…”