The use of endemic Iranian plant,Echium amoenum,against the ethyl methanesulfonate and the recovery of mutagenic effects

In this study, potential genotoxic effects of ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) that caused mutagenicity in a variety of organisms were tried to resolve by the methanol and chloroform extract of Echium amoenum (EA_met and EA_chl) Fisch. & C.A. Mey. from the family of Boraginaceae, which is an endemic plant, and is used as an alternative treatment among public in Iran. Somatic mutation and recombination test with Drosophila wing was used to determine the genotoxic and antigenotoxic effects in our investigations. For this purpose, 3-day-old transheterozygous larvae of mwh/flr³ genotype of Drosophila melanogaster were used in all our experiments. The larvae were fed chronically on the Drosophila instant medium (DIM) including 1 ppm EMS. However, in another application group, different concentrations (1, 2 and 4 ppm) of EA_met and EA_chl were added to DIM including 1 ppm EMS (EMS + EA_met and EMS + EA_chl). Then, for the matured individuals, wing preparates were prepared within the mediums that include control group that has only DIM, negative control group that contains dimethyl sulfoxide and application groups in different concentrations that contain EMS, EMS + EA_met and EMS + EA_chl. Clone induction frequency for the normal wing phenotype of EMS application group was observed to be 2.00. In the EMS + EA_met application group, the value of 1 ppm EA_met is 1.49, value of 2 ppm EA_met is 1.08 and value of 4 ppm EA_met is 0.72; in the EMS + EA_chl application group, the value of 1 ppm is EA_chl 1.33, value of 2 ppm EA_chl is 0.67 and value of 4 ppm EA_chl is 0.56 were determined. This decrease observed between EMS and all application groups in terms of total induction frequency is statistically significant (p < 0.05). These results concluded that chloroform extracts were more effective than the methanol extracts of E. amoenum.