An investigation about the genotoxic activities of some herbal teas used as folk medicine

Abstract

In this research the genotoxic activities of some herbal teas used as folk medicine were investigated by the umu-test using a tester strain Salmonella typhimurium TA 1535/pSK 1002 carrying the umuC-lacZ fused gene with (+S9) and without (-S9) metabolic activation. The induction of umu gene expression was monitored by measuring the cellular β-galactosidase activity produced by fusion gene using a colorimetric method. Consequently, from 10 herbal teas used in this research, only two of them showed weak genotoxicity.