Desmutagenic Effects of Various Marine Algae Used as Foodstuffs in Japan

Abstract

Japanese people have traditionally enjoyed a wide variety of marine algae as foodstuffs. In order to examine the possible benefit of taking algae, we have examined the desmutagenicity, by Ames' method, of 29 samples of 25 species of edible algae: 1 Chlorophyta, 13 Phaeophyta and 11 Rhodophyta.Dried algae were pulverized. After simmering in water, the extracts and the insoluble fractions were prepared. None of the algal preparations, when added to assay plates with or without S-9 mixture from rat liver, showed any mutagenicity toward Salmonella typhimurium TA98 or TA100.The insoluble fraction of every algal sample reduced to varying degrees the number of revertant colonies induced by known mutagens existing in food, i. e., dinitropyrene, Trp-P-1, Trp-P-2, 2-aminoanthracene and benzo [a] pyrene. Two Phaeophyta, Nemacystus decipieus and Hizikia fusiforme, showed strong desmutagenicity, while the most common algal foodstuff, the family of Laminaria, Undaria pinnatifida and Porphyra yezoensis, exerted moderate effects. Some of the species of Rhodophyta showed minor effects.We have shown in this paper that not only Laminaria japonica, of which the desmutagenicity was reported in more detail in our previous paper, but also a variety of algal foodstuffs are safe in terms of carcinogenicity and may even be helpful to reduce the mutagenicity of mutagenic substances present in other foodstuffs.