Glucosinolates fortification of cruciferous sprouts by sulphur supplementation during cultivation to enhance anti-cancer activity
Research highlights
► Cruciferous sprouts used: cabbage, broccoli and radish. ► Sulphur supplementation at 60 kg/ha increased total glucosinolates in sprouts. ► Glucosinolates, progoitrin and glucoerucin showed increase in concentration. ► Glucobrassicin, glucohirsutin and 4-methoxybrassicin also showed increase. ► Enhanced anti-proliferative activity against HepG2 and CT26 cells.
Introduction
The health-promoting quality of sprouts can be enhanced by supplementing the growth media with various nutrients during sprouting. Total phenolic content as well as antioxidant activity were found to be increased in pea sprouts when grown in media supplemented with folic acid and vitamin-C (Burguieres, McCue, Kwon, & Shetty, 2007). For soybean and corn sprouts an increase in seedling weight, height, phenolic content, antioxidant activity and chlorophyll content was observed when supplemented with fish protein hydrolysate (Horii, McCue, & Shetty, 2007). Recently, we have reported supplementing buckwheat sprouts with trace element water, which not only leads to increase in mineral content, but also antioxidant properties, thus increasing their nutritional value (Hsu et al., 2008, Liu et al., 2007).
Sprouting has also been shown to rapidly increase the glucosinolates content in cruciferous seeds (Fahey, Zhang, & Talalay, 1997). These cruciferous glucosinolates are known to induce the activity of detoxification enzymes in normal cells and can also effectively inhibit tumour cell growth; thereby reduce the incidence of cancer (Martinez-Villaluengaet, Frias, Gulewicz, Gulewicz, & Vidal-Valverde, 2008). The structure of glucosinolates, regardless of their identity or branched-chain, contains a number of sulphur containing side chains. This is because during the biosynthesis of glucosinolates, a thiol group is added to the precursor assembly as a result of conjugation with cysteine, followed by CS cleavage to produce a thiohydroximate. Finally, transfer of glucose and sulphate moieties completes the basic skeleton of glucosinolates (Graser, Oldham, Brown, Temp, & Gershenzon, 2001). Thus, if sulphur is supplemented during sprouting process, the synthesis of glucosinolate content in cruciferous sprouts may be increased, which in turn may increase the anti-cancer activity of the sprouts.
Among the crucifers, cabbage (Brassica oleracea), broccoli (Brassica capitata) and radish (Raphanus sativus) sprouts have been proven having better anti-proliferative properties against different cancer cells (Boivin et al., 2009). Therefore in the present study, an attempt was made to supplement these cruciferous sprouts with sulphur salt to increase their glucosinolates contents. Further, the hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer are among the top three of the most prominent form of cancers in Taiwan, and there mortality ranks fifth and fourth worldwide, respectively (Chung et al., 2010, Lee et al., 2009, Linn et al., 2008). Hence these two cell lines were used for the anti-cancer properties evaluation of the fortified cruciferous sprouts.
Section snippets
Materials and chemicals
Cabbage, broccoli and radish seeds were obtained from Yu-Hsing Enterprise Co., Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan. Seeds were sprouted in soil purchased from South China Sea Industry Co., Ltd., Taiwan. The 2,2′-Azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS), 3-(4,5-dimethyl thiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide (MTT), α,α,-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), sinigrin hydrate, sodium tetrachloropalladate, trypan blue, DEAE Sephadex A-25, sulfatase
Growth profiles of cruciferous sprouts
The growth profiles of the sprouts were monitored every alternate day up to 12 days. From day 2 to 12, the cabbage sprout height increased from 2.8 cm to 11.9 cm, broccoli sprouts from 0.8 cm increased to 9.3 cm, radish sprouts increased from 2.1 cm to 15.6 cm (Figure S1, Supplementary data). Meanwhile, radish sprouts showed a marked increase in sprout weight after day 6, while weight gain in case of broccoli as well as cabbage was comparatively slow. From day 0 to 12 the sprouts weight for cabbage
Conclusions
In the present study, cruciferous sprouts were successfully supplemented with sulphur salt to increase their glucosinolate content in a very short duration. Different aliphatic glucosinolates showed a prominent increase in their concentration upon sulphur supplementation. Consequently, the fortified broccoli and radish sprouts are able to inhibit the growth of HepG2 human hepatocarcinoma cells. While all of the three fortified sprouts possesses anti-proliferative activity against CT26 mouse
Acknowledgement
We are thankful to National Science Council, Taiwan (Republic of China) for funding this work.
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2018, Food Research International
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