Abstract
BackgroundEssential oils extracted from aromatic plants exhibit important biological activities and have become increasingly important for scientific research. The essential oil extracted from Cinnamomum cassia Presl (CC-EO) has various functional properties, however, little information is available regarding the tyrosinase inhibitory activity. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to investigate the chemical composition and tyrosinase inhibitory activity of the CC-EO.Resultscis-2-methoxycinnamic acid (43.06%) and cinnamaldehyde (42.37%) were found to be the two major components of the CC-EO identified by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The inhibitory activities of CC-EO and its major constituents were further evaluated against mushroom tyrosinase. The results showed that CC-EO and cinnamaldehyde exhibited anti-tyrosinase activities with IC50 values of 6.16 ± 0.04 mg/mL and 4.04 ± 0.08 mg/mL, respectively. However, cis-2-methoxycinnamic acid did not show any anti-tyrosinase activity. The inhibition kinetics were analyzed by Lineweaver-Burk plots and second replots, which revealed that CC-EO and cinnamaldehyde were mixed-type inhibitors. The inhibition constants (Ki) for CC-EO and cinnamaldehyde were calculated to be 4.71 ± 0.09 mg/mL and 2.38 ± 0.09 mg/mL, respectively.ConclusionThese results demonstrate that CC-EO and its major component, cinnamaldehyde, possess potent anti-tyrosinase activities and may be a good source for skin-whitening agents.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1999-3110-54-10) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Essential oils extracted from aromatic plants exhibit important biological activities and have become increasingly important for scientific research
Our results showed that the two major constituents of CC-essential oil (EO) were cis-2-methoxycinnamic acid (43.06%) and cinnamaldehyde (42.37%) and that the minor compounds were o-methoxycinnamaldehyde (5.11%), 1,2-dimethoxy-4-(3-methoxy-1-propenyl) benzene (2.05%), cinnamyl acetate (1.83%) and other compounds (1.25~0.16%) in the present study
The essential oil extracted by steam distillation from the stem bark of C. cassia Presl was quantitatively analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). cis-2-Methoxycinnamic acid and cinnamaldehyde were determined as the major compounds of the oil (43.06% and 42.37%, respectively)
Summary
Essential oils extracted from aromatic plants exhibit important biological activities and have become increasingly important for scientific research. A number of tyrosinase inhibitors from both natural and synthetic sources that inhibited monophenolase, diphenolase or both of these activities have been identified to date (Kim and Uyama 2005) These tyrosinase inhibitors include plant polyphenols and aldehydes, fungal metabolites, derivatives of natural compounds, and synthetics origins. The tyrosinase inhibitory constituents of the essential oil extracted from Cinnamomum cassia (Ngoc et al 2009; Lee et al 2002) and relative cinnamon species, C. zeylanicum (Marongiu et al 2007) have been well documented. The inhibitory pattern of cinnamaldehyde isolated from C. cassia (Lee et al 2002), C. zeylanicum (Marongiu et al 2007), olive oil (Kubo and Kinst-Hori 1999) and the root of Pulsatilla cernua was rather controvesial. The results were compared with those of the well-known tyrosinase inhibitor kojic acid
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