Mutagenic-Antimutagenic Effect from the extract of a Medical Plant: the Wormwood in the Drosophila SMART assay
Authors: Ana Cecilia Luis Casta?eda 1; Dulce María de Jesús Bolaños Neria 2; Marco Antonio Carballo Ontiveros 3; América Nitxin Castañeda Sortibrán 4
Affiliations: 1) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; 2) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; 3) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; 4) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Keywords: x. other (somatic mutation); f. recombination systems
In Mexico, around 4000 flowering plants are known for medicinal use, of which only 5% have previous studies on their chemical composition, pharmacology, safety, efficacy, and possible adverse effects. Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is a plant widely used in traditional Mexican medicine to remedy stomach pain, bile problems, antipyretic, and other conditions. The plant's parts used for this purpose are its cooked leaves and branches, which are drunk on an empty stomach. However, there are no parameters that allow establishing an adequate dose according to its toxicity in the body. In this sense, the objective of this work is to know the possible mutagenic and antimutagenic effect of the aqueous extract of Artemisia absinthium L. through the somatic mutation and recombination test (SMART) in Drosophila melanogaster wing cells. The SMART assay is based on detecting the loss of heterozygosity, which can be the result of different events, such as mitotic recombination, point mutation, deletion, and nondisjunction, while using recessive markers that are expressed on the surface of the wings of flies, such as spots (clones) with multiple wing trichome (mwh) and/or flame-shaped (flr3) phenotype, rather than a single trichome per cell. The SMART assay commonly uses 2 crosses, the standard cross (ST) and the high bioactivation cross (BE). BE is characterized by a high constitutive level of cytochromes P450, facilitating the detection of promutagens and procancer. In this study, three concentrations (1, 5, and 10%) of wormwood extract were used in order to detect the possible mutagenic effect, as well as a combination of 4NQO (mutagenic compound) with 10% of wormwood to evaluate its possible antimutagenic effect. The data obtained allow us to conclude that wormwood does not have a mutagenic effect at any of the concentrations used. However, it was found that it potentiates the mutagenic effect of 4NQO. In addition, it was observed that it does not have an antimutagenic effect either.