Genotoxicity and Antigenotoxicity Assessments of the Flavonoid Vitexin by the Drosophila melanogaster Somatic Mutation and Recombination Test

Abstract

Vitexin is a C-glycosylated flavone found in various medicinal plants with several proven biological properties such as anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antimicrobial, cytotoxic, and antioxidant activities. Considering that the human population consumes many foods that contain this flavonoid, the objective of this study was to investigate the genotoxic and the antigenotoxic potentials of vitexin by the SMART (Somatic Mutation and Recombination Test) in Drosophila melanogaster wings, in vivo. To evaluate the genotoxic activity, larvae obtained from standard (ST) and high bioactivation (HB) crosses were chronically treated with different concentrations of vitexin (0.15, 0.3, and 0.6 mM). For the evaluation of antigenotoxic activity, the same vitexin concentrations were associated with two damage inducing agents: doxorubicin (0.2 mM) and benzo[a]pyrene (1.0 mM). The results obtained for genotoxic activity showed that vitexin did not induce a statistically significant increment in the frequency of mutant spots, when compared to control. The results for the evaluation of antigenotoxicity indicated that the flavonoid statistically reduced the frequency of mutant spots, when compared to those treated with only the damage inducing agents. Thus, this article presents results that have demonstrated the antigenotoxic activity of vitexin, which could be applied in new studies for the development of drugs with chemoprotective effects.

Phytochemical and In Vitro Genotoxicity Studies of Standardized Ficus deltoidea var. kunstleri Aqueous Extract

“…Our finding showed that flavonoids and phenolic compounds were identified in FDAE as reported in the previous study [12]. This study revealed FDAE consist of catechin and epicatechin, which are powerful antioxidant together with the presence of vitexin and apigenin, which have been demonstrated to have antioxidant with antigenotoxicity properties [13,14].…”

Multitargeted Effects of Vitexin and Isovitexin on Diabetes Mellitus and Its Complications

“…Vitexin protected mitochondrial dysfunction by promoting mitochondrial activity, its membrane activity, and the ATP level, while it ultimately mitigated mitochondrial injury and cardiomyocyte apoptosis through enhancing the expression of MFN2, blocked the induction of Drp1, and significantly mitigated ROS content [198]. Moreover, in vitro, treating genotoxic-induced larvae with vitexin prompted its antigenotoxicity effects and decreased the occurrence of mutant spots, compared to control [199].…”

“…For the genetic toxicity test, the results showed that vitexin insignificantly induced few mutant spots and exhibited no genotoxic activity in vitro [199].…”

“…Structural features that affect antimutagenic capacities of natural flavonoids include physiochemical parameters such as hydrophilicity or lipophilicity which is dependent on the degree of hydroxylation as well as O-methylation, glycosylation on rings A and B, C4-keto moiety, and the double bond at C2-C3 [213]. Furthermore, the in vivo genotoxic test, SMART, in Drosophila melanogaster wings demonstrated that vitexin has no genotoxic activity [199]. e metabolite vitexin was investigated to establish genotoxic profiles in viable human lymphocyte cells in vitro for 48 h, and the results show that the planar flavones vitexin enhances the sister chromatid exchange frequency by a factor of around 4-5 at a concentration of 100 μg/ml and induces micronuclei and a small increase in polyploid cells [214].…”

Genotoxic Assessment of the Dry Decoction of Myracrodruon urundeuva Allemão (Anacardiaceae) Leaves in Somatic Cells of Drosophila melanogaster by the Comet and SMART Assays

“…D. melanogaster is considered a model organism due to the similarities between human and fruit fly genomes and conservation of gene functions (Lenz et al ). Moreover, they have a short‐time life cycle (about 10 days at 22°C), well‐defined morphological characters, the presence of enzymes for the metabolism of xenobiotics, and a large number of well‐characterized mutant strains (Graf et al ; Ostiling and Johanson ; Singh et al ; Doke and Dhawale ; Fernandes et al ). For these reasons, D. melanogaster has been used to evaluate natural products with neuroprotective (Chaudhary and Dhande ), antimutagenic (Rodrigues et al , ; Carmona et al ), genotoxic and antigenotoxic activities (Fernandes et al ).…”