Hernández Iker, Alegre Leonor, Van Breusegem Frank, Munné-Bosch Sergi
Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University, 9052 Gent, Belgium.
Trends Plant Sci. 2009 Mar;14(3):125-32. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2008.12.003. Epub 2009 Feb 18.
Flavonoids are a large family of plant secondary metabolites, principally recognized for their health-promoting properties in human diets. Most flavonoids outperform well-known antioxidants, such as ascorbate (vitamin C) and alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E), in in vitro antioxidant assays because of their strong capacity to donate electrons or hydrogen atoms. However, experimental evidence for an antioxidant function in plants is limited to a few individual flavonoids under very specific experimental and developmental conditions. As we discuss here, although flavonoids have been demonstrated to accumulate with oxidative stress during abiotic and biotic environmental assaults, a convincing spatio-temporal correlation with the flavonoid oxidation products is not yet available. Thereby, the widely accepted antioxidant function of flavonoids in plants is still a matter of debate.
类黄酮是一大类植物次生代谢产物，主要因其在人类饮食中的健康促进特性而为人所知。在体外抗氧化试验中，大多数类黄酮比著名的抗氧化剂如抗坏血酸（维生素C）和α-生育酚（维生素E）表现更好，因为它们具有很强的提供电子或氢原子的能力。然而，植物中抗氧化功能的实验证据仅限于在非常特定的实验和发育条件下的少数几种类黄酮。正如我们在此所讨论的，尽管已证明类黄酮在非生物和生物环境攻击期间会随着氧化应激而积累，但与类黄酮氧化产物令人信服的时空相关性仍未得到证实。因此，类黄酮在植物中被广泛接受的抗氧化功能仍然存在争议。
