Evaluation of the Potential Toxicity of Anthraquinone Derivatives in Chinese Herbal Medicines by the Resonance Light Scattering Spectrum

Abstract

In this paper, resonance light scattering method has been used to evaluate potential toxic mechanism of physcion, chrysophanol and rhein interaction with DNA, which are based on the interactions with DNA and compared with ethidium bromide (EB), adriamycin and mitoxantrone. And then, the saturation value binding with DNA, which is calculated by the resonance light scattering results, is first put forward as the evaluation index to evaluate the ability of intercalating into DNA and the potential toxicity of anthraquinone molecule. The greater the saturation value is, the stronger the ability of intercalating into DNA and the potential toxicity of anthraquinone molecule are. The results showed that the saturation value of physcion, chrysophanol, rhein, mitoxantrone, adriamycin or ethidium bromide interacting with DNA is 0.15, 0.53, 0.66, 3.31, 10.58, 14.70, respectively. From these results, it can be speculated that physcion, chrysophanol or rhein shows capacity of intercalating into DNA and toxicity, but they are much weaker than those of mitoxantrone, adriamycin and ethidium bromide. This study provides a fast, easy operation and low cost biological detection method for evaluating the potential toxicity of some herbal active molecules.