Antioxidant properties, proximate content and cytotoxic activity of Echinophora tournefortii Jaub. & Spach

Abstract

As the life source for living organisms, oxygen produces oxygen radicals with physical and chemical events. For living organisms, especially those that metabolize oxygen, reactive oxygen types are formed through enzyme-catalyzed metabolic pathways, by various biological functions, by exposure to ultraviolet light, or when foreign substances are taken up in the body. Reactive oxygen species cause damage to the cell by altering the structure, resulting in several mutations such as base modifications, base deletions, and chain breaks on the DNA and RNA. As a result of these mutations, the protein synthesis mechanisms that begin with the transcription of nucleic acids, change and thus, damage can occur in many of the enzyme-catalyzed metabolic pathways. Major DNA damage cannot be repaired and can, cause cell death or range of cancers (Nordberg & Arner, 2001; McCord, 2000). On these cases, antioxidants that, convert reactive oxygen species to non-toxic products and stop or eliminate the adverse effects of reactive oxygen species, prevent some disorders, such as cardiovascular diseases, cataracts, diabetes and infections. Ot is acknowledged that consumers believe any medicine derived from plant sources is safer and healthier than synthetic ones and hence there is more focus on the replacement of synthetic antioxidants with natural additives. For this reason, in order to find new and effective sources, studies on the screening of medicinal plants containing functional compounds that provide antioxidant properties, have become very important in recent years (Al-Dabbas, 2017). Echinophora tournefortii Jaub. & Spach belongs to the genus Echinophora and locally it is called ‘dikenli çörtük’ in Turkish. This plant is a perennial and 20-40 cm high (Baytop, 1994). The genus Echinophora belongs to the Apiaceae family, which comprises approximately 10 species, and is distributed through the Mediterranean and Middle East regions (Rechinger, 1987). On the Flora of Turkey, this genus is represented by six species, three of which are endemic (Davis, 1972). Members of this genus are used for imparting flavor to foods such as cheese, yogurt (Delazar et al., 2015) and in folk medicine it is used to treat diseases such as gastric ulcers and wounds (Gokbulut et al., 2013). Various Echinophora plants have also previously been investigated for the antioxidant activities of the essential oils (Delazar et al., 2015; Mileski et al., 2014; Gokbulut et al., 2013; Gholivand et al., 2011) and various extracts (Mileski et al., 2014; Gholivand et al., 2011). Nevertheless, there is no report that has studied the phenolic composition and biological activities of various extracts of E. tournefortii. The aim of this study is to examine the following three items: (1) the antioxidant capacities of methanol, acetone and water extracts using six complementary methods, radical scavenging (DPPH and ABTS), the antioxidant (β-carotene/linoleic acid test system, phosphomolybdenum), reducing power and metal chelating assays (2) total phenolic and flavonoid content (3) proximate composition and (4) cytotoxic activity. Antioxidant properties, proximate content and cytotoxic activity of Echinophora tournefortii Jaub. & Spach