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Biotechnology Congress 2018 & Emerging Materials 2018
Note:
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EMERGING MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
BIOTECHNOLOGY
&
Annual Congress on
Global Congress on
Joint Event on
Biomedical Research
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ISSN: 0976-1683
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Volume 29
Gurumayum Jitendra Sharma, Biomed Res 2018, Volume 29 | DOI: 10.4066/biomedicalresearch-C4-009
PROTECTION OF RADIATION-INDUCED
DNA DAMAGE BY ANTIOXIDANT-RICH
MEDICINAL PLANT EXTRACTS
T
he broad field of free radicals and antioxidants covers an emerging area
known as redox biology and has been perceived as focusing around the
use of antioxidant supplements to prevent a variety of human diseases. During
the events of evolution, the emergence of photosynthetic system in aerobic
organisms, plants, generates reactive oxygen species and has opened a
paradoxical situation compelling life confront hostile environment and to
be able to adapt, the redox processes have become increasingly significant.
Antioxidants/free radicals permeate the entire living systems in the cellular
milieu. Life is a balance between the two like a tug-of-war: antioxidants
serve to decrease the levels of free radicals permitting them to perform
useful biological functions without causing much damage. However, some
damages are inevitable requiring repair systems to maintain cellular integrity
and viability. Reactive oxygen species are all over the cellular environment in
aerobic microbes, plants and animals. These species protect living systems
from various types of infections and involve in critical signaling pathways.
Eventually, these species also often kill cells, tissues and organs in the end. The
continual damages by these species, failing repair pathways, can cause age-
related tumor development, neuro-degenerative diseases and several human
disorders. It would have been wonderful if life had evolved entirely in the
anaerobic environment, in which case, the life-spans would have been much
longer, and diseaseswould have rarely occurred. Interestingly, several medicinal
plants possess bio-active molecules which can prevent human diseases.
These molecules having diverse chemical entities possess high antioxidant
profiles and encounter damaging radical species extremely efficiently at time
scales of nano-, pico- and femto-seconds in cellular environment thereby
preventing molecular damages done to the DNA and membranes. Antioxidant
potentials and radioprotective properties of curcumin and rhizome extract of
tropical ginger have been investigated. Free radical scavenging activities were
measured using ferric ion reducing power assay, DPPH radical test, hydroxyl
radical scavenging activity assay, nitric oxide scavenging assay and superoxide
scavenging capacity. Both curcumin and tropical ginger extract exhibited
good protection against radiation-induced damage in plasmid pBR322 and
rat bone marrow cell DNAs as revealed by agarose gel and single cell gel
electrophoreses. Some of these results shall be discussed in this paper.
Biography
Gurumayum Jitendra Sharma has done his PhD
(Radiation Biology) from Jawaharlal Nehru Univer-
sity, New Delhi and Postdoctoral research from De-
partment of Biochemistry, Brunel University, Lon-
don. Since 1976, he joined the Department of Life
Sciences, Manipur University, and retired as Senior
Professor in 2016. Currently, he continues as UGC-
BSR Faculty Fellow in Life Sciences at Manipur
University. He has 90 publications in national/inter-
national journals, supervised 20 PhDs, participated
in over 75 conferences and delivered 34 keynote/
plenary/invited lectures in conferences/congress-
es/workshops held in USA, UK, France, China, Ja-
pan, Netherlands, Italy, Singapore, Thailand and
India. He was a Visiting Professor at National In-
stitute of Food and Nutrition Research, Rome. He
is reviewer for 12 international journals of repute,
his research areas are Plant Biotechnology, food ir-
radiation, free radicals and dietary antioxidants. He
serves as Member, Scientific Panel on GMOs and
foods, Food Safety and Standard Authority of India
(FSSAI), Government of India.
gjs1951@rediffmail.comGurumayum Jitendra Sharma
Manipur University, India