Indian Traditional Medicine Jasada Bhasma and Other Zinc-Containing Nanoparticles Alleviate Reactive Oxygen Species–Mediated Cell Damage in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT

Indian traditional medicine Jasada Bhasma is a unique particulate preparation of zinc, which has been used by traditional practitioners for the treatment of various diseases such as diabetes, eye diseases, etc. This paper is an attempt to understand the mode of action of this and related types of particulate matter in biology. The biological activity of Jasada Bhasma has been tested on Saccharomyces cerevisiae wild strain, chosen as a model eukaryotic system. Results show that Jasada Bhasma– treated yeast cells were able to maintain a higher level of growth over control. DNA and enzyme studies, together with advanced microscopic studies of cellular and nuclear morphology, suggest a protective action against cellular damage mediated by reactive oxygen species (ROS). Further, a nanoparticulate-size fraction of the Bhasma showed effects comparable to the unfractionated mass, at much lower dosage levels. In comparative studies, qualitatively similar effects were also exhibited by other compounds of zinc. Our findings provide a preliminary justification of the potential usefulness of Jasada Bhasma as a therapeutic agent and provide a first level understanding the mechanism of Bhasma action through free radical control.

KEYWORDS:

• Bhasma
• cell morphology
• electron microscopy
• fluorescence
• free radical
• nanoparticle
• zinc

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (Nanobiotechnology Fund) and Ministry of Human Resource Department (MHRD), Government of India. The authors are grateful to Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Center (RSIC), (Bombay, India) for the technical assistance in ICP analysis, and to the XRD Laboratory, Department of Material Science, Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay, India), for the technical assistance in XRD analysis.