Molecular Mechanism of the Effects of Violacein on Cancer Cells

Ghadah Khaled Yousuf, Tennessee State University

Abstract

Several effective microbiological and natural treatments of breast, lung, and prostate cancer can prevent surgery and remove damaged tissues. Chromobacterium violaceum (CV) produces a violet colored pigment known as Violacein. We extracted violacein from Chromobacterium violaceum 14N23 strain isolated from Copper Basin, Tennessee, to study its anti-cancer activities in cancer cell lines. The previous studies showed violacein isolated from Chromobacterium violaceum affected the growth of some types of breast and lung cancer cell lines. However, the sole purpose of this study is to find and evaluate the anti-cancer properties of violacein extract against human breast cancer BT549, BT20, and prostate cancer PC3 cell lines. The exposure of cancer cells to serially diluted concentrations of Violacein for 24 hours demonstrated anti-cancer effects. The crystal violet assay determines cell viability, and violacein inhibits proliferation of BT20 and PC3 cancer cell lines. The results indicated that violacein extract stimulated cell proliferation at lower concentrations of 1, 0.5, and 0.25 μg/ml in BT20 breast cancer cell line. However, violacein extract did not affect the viability in the PC3 prostate cancer cell line. Because migration is a crucial estate of live cells and essential for immune response and disease processes such as cancer metastasis, cell migration is another efficacious method for cancer research. Transwell cell migration and invasion assay that measure the capacity of cell motility and invasiveness toward a chemo-attractant gradient are one of the procedures that we used in these studies. In the cell migration experiment, different doses of violacein (1,0.5, 0.25, 0.125 μg/ml) were examined in breast and prostate cancer cell lines to see if violacein affects those cell lines' cell migration. We found that violacein had a significant effect on the migration of BT549 breast cancer cells at a concentration of 0.25 μg/ml; however, it had no significant effect on BT20 breast cancer cells. As well as PC3 cancer cell line was inconclusive with the cell migration assay. This result provides us mechanistic information that violacein has an inhibitory effect on BT549 cell migration. Further, in the present study, the peroxidation of lipid assays was used to determine the antioxidant activity of violacein extracted from Chromobacterium violaceum in BT20 and PC3 cancer cell lines. The results indicate that violacein extract did not affect reactive oxygen species (ROS) compared to the control.

Subject Area

Biology|Oncology

Recommended Citation

Ghadah Khaled Yousuf, "Molecular Mechanism of the Effects of Violacein on Cancer Cells" (2021). ETD Collection for Tennessee State University. Paper AAI10256444.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI10256444

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