INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF AZROUBINE (E 122) AND VITAMIN C ON MITOTIC CELL DIVISION, NUCLEIC ACIDS CONTENT AND GENE EXPRESSION

Synthetic food additive colours, have been introduced in our food in order to give an attractive colours to it. It has been noticed, however, that most of the applied synthetic food colours have properties similar to the mutagenic chemicals. Evidences have accumulated in the last years to indicate that a large number of synthetic food additives are capable of inducing genetic diseases to human (Miller et al., 1996; Karen et al., 2006; Martin, 2007). Food additives are substances added to food in order to retain or improve desirable characteristics or quality. In the last years many more additives have been introduced, of either natural or artificial origin. Many of which can be the cause of certain health conditions, such as E102 that can cause asthma attacks and has links to thyroid tumors, E104 which can cause dermatitis, E110 side effects are (kidney tumours, nausea and vomiting), E122 can cause bad reactions in asthmatics and people allergic to aspirin, E124 carcinogenic in animals, E407 recently linked to cancer (Martin, 2007). Some Europeans countries prevented many synthetic food colours (E142, E131 and E123), as this colours led to the formation of cancer as descried by (Martin, 2007). Azroubine or the other name is carmoisine (E122). It is red colour, coal tar derivative and can produce bad reactions in asthmatic and people allergic to aspirin. E122 is banned in USA. Several evidences have indicated that some food additive colours can induce genotoxic effects (Macioszek and Kononowicz, 2004; Makoto and Noriho, 2005; Jamal, 2006). Most of these studies have been oriented to demonstrate the antimitotic and chromotoxic activities of these food additives and pointed out their danger as carcinogens or mutagens. However, some of these studies deal with the effect of these food additives on protein banding pattern and on nucleic acids content (Shuji et al., 2001; Wei et al., 2005). Vitamins supplements are known to enhance the plant activities and did not have a toxic or mutagenic action (Khan and Sinha, 1993; Fawzia, 2002; Surendra et al., 2005; Sesso et al., 2008). The present investigation was planned to study the interactive effects of different concentrations of the synthetic food additive azroubine or carmoisine (E122) and vitamin C on mitotic activity and nucleic acids content in root tips of Allium cepa. Also, the capacity of synthetic food additive to induce chromosomal aberration and changes in seed protein electrophoretic profiles were investigated.