Evaluation of genotoxic effects of methanolic extract of brown seaweed Stoechospermum marginatum

Abstract

Seaweeds are considered as a valuable source of bioactive compounds produced as secondary metabolites having a broad spectrum of biological activities. Recently seaweed has been extensively utilized by pharmaceutical, chemical and nutraceutical industries as valuable sources of raw material of natural origin. The present study aimed at evaluating the mutagenic and genotoxic effects of methanolic extract of brown seaweed Stoechospermum marginatum. The test extract was assessed for its potential mutagenic effect using in vitro bacteria reverse mutation assay (Ames test) and for its potential clastogenic and DNA damaging effects using in vivo rodent bone marrow micronucleus and alkaline comet assay respectively. The test extract did not produce a two-fold increase or a reproducible dose-dependent increase in the number of revertant colonies in all the bacterial tester strains at the highest dose of 5000 μg/plate tested both with and without metabolic activation. No significant clastogenic and DNA damaging effects were observed at the highest dose of 2000 mg/kg body weight when the test extract was assayed in-vivo in mice bone marrow erythrocytes and peripherally in lymphocytes respectively. The result obtained from this study revealed that methanolic extract of Stoechospermum marginatum is safe to living cells genome and does not produce significant mutagenic and genotoxic effect when assayed in both in vitro and in vivo testing systems.