Lim Su-Wen, Loh Hwei-San, Ting Kang-Nee, Bradshaw Tracey Dawn, Allaudin Zeenathul Nazariah
Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia.
School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia.
Trop Life Sci Res. 2015 Apr;26(1):111-20.
The yellow tetrazolium salt 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) is widely used to determine cell viability in cell proliferation and cytotoxic assays. MTT is reduced by metabolically active cells to form an insoluble purple formazan product that is quantifiable by spectrophotometry. It is the most common and direct assay for cell viability. However, in this present study, we demonstrated that the vitamin E isomers α-β-γ-δ-tocotrienols and α-tocopherol were able to reduce MTT into a formazan product, despite the absence of living cells. For comparison, a second method for determining cell viability, which is the neutral red uptake assay, was used in parallel with the MTT assay. The results showed that neutral red did not interact with the vitamin E isomers. Our findings suggest that the MTT assay is not suitable for studying the proliferative effects of vitamin E isomers on cell growth.
黄色四氮唑盐3-(4,5-二甲基噻唑-2-基)-2,5-二苯基四氮唑溴盐（MTT）广泛用于细胞增殖和细胞毒性试验中测定细胞活力。MTT被代谢活跃的细胞还原形成一种不溶性的紫色甲臜产物，可通过分光光度法进行定量。它是最常用且直接的细胞活力检测方法。然而，在本研究中，我们证明了维生素E异构体α-β-γ-δ-生育三烯酚和α-生育酚能够将MTT还原为甲臜产物，尽管不存在活细胞。为作比较，与MTT试验同时使用了另一种测定细胞活力的方法，即中性红摄取试验。结果表明中性红与维生素E异构体不发生相互作用。我们的研究结果表明，MTT试验不适用于研究维生素E异构体对细胞生长的增殖作用。
