extract was found to increase as a function of concentration. The DNA is susceptible to oxidative damage and the hydroxyl radicals oxidize guanosine and thymine to 8-hydroxyl-2-deoxy guanosine and thymine glycol which damage the DNA leading to mutagenesis.3 The hydroxyl radicals generated by Fenton reaction were used as a positive control which induce DNA strand breaks in calf thymus DNA. The damaged DNA fragments migrated farther as compared to native calf thymus DNA. The C. carvi phenolic extract at 5, 10, 20 and 30 μg offered dose dependent protection against DNA damage induced by hydroxyl radicals in calf thymus DNA ( Fig. 4). The phenolic compounds and the essential learn more oils of spices are reported to possess antimicrobial activity.28 and 29 The antimicrobial effect of C. carvi extract was tested against four bacteria causing food borne diseases and food spoilage. As shown in Table 1, the bacterial species namely, E. coli, B. cereus, S. aureus and S. typhimurium were found to be sensitive and showed significant inhibition of the growth in presence of C. carvi extract. The data showed that the inhibition of B. cereus and S. aureus was superior as compared to E. coli and S. typhimurium. Thus, Gram-positive bacteria were found to be highly sensitive to C. carvi phenolic extract than Gram-negative
bacteria. There is an increasing interest in natural antioxidants to prevent the deleterious effect of free radicals in biological systems and also in preventing the deterioration of foods due to oxidation of lipids and microbial spoilage. In this study, we isolated the bioactive compounds from C. carvi and the data presented here indicates LY294002 chemical structure that the powder has comparatively less water and 50% ethanol soluble phenolic compounds. The extraction efficiency of phenolic compounds increased about four fold in the solvent system containing 70% methanol and 70% acetone as compared to 50% ethanol. In comparison with the literature, the C. carvi phenolic extract has less total phenolic content than Cuminum all nigrum, another spice, which has 53.60 mg/g of defatted powder.
30 The phenolic extract of C. carvi was found to be highly effective in scavenging DPPH radical with an IC50 value of 2.7 μg/ml, whereas BHA and BHT showed 50% scavenging activity at 4.19 μg/ml and 8.35 μg/ml, respectively. Further, C. carvi was found to be more effective DPPH scavenger as compared to C. nigrum which scavenged 50% DPPH at a concentration of 14 μg/ml. 30 This suggests that, C. carvi is a highly effective free radical scavenger or hydrogen donor and contributes significantly to the antioxidant activity. The C. carvi is highly potent in scavenging superoxide anion radical with an IC50 value 35 μg as compared to C. nigrum, which has an IC50 value of 125 μg/ml. 30 The C. carvi phenolic extract has potent antioxidants which can neutralize the free radicals and prevent the formation of reactive oxygen species.