Genotoxic Potentials of Natural Products Detected by a Short-Term Test Using Diploid Strains of Aspergillus nidulans

Main aim is to evaluate the genotoxic potentials of three classes of natural products, a sesquiterpene lactone (cynaropicrin), a saponin (stigmast-7en-3 -ol-glucopyranoside) and a steroid (stigmasterol), at low doses, using the Homozygotization Index test (HI). This short-term test, deals with the determination of alterations in mitotic crossing-over frequencies eventually involving heterozygous auxotrophic genes in diploid strains of Aspergillus nidulans. In this way, treatments of UT448//UT184 and Dp II-I//UT184 diploid strains with the natural products showed that saponin and lactone significantly increased the homozygotization index (HI) of both strains, especially for the diploid Dp II-I//UT184. No effect was observed with the steroid. On this account it presents remarkable potentials to detect the genotoxic/carcinogenic effects of bioactive natural products. Furthermore, this is the first time the low doses effects of bioactive natural products were detected using A. nidulans.