Abstract
Five wines and one brandy of Spanish origin as well as three herbal teas and ordinary black tea were tested for genotoxicity in the wing Somatic Mutation And Recombination Test (SMART) which makes use of the two recessive wing cell markers multiple wing hairs (mwh) and flare (flr3) on the left arm of chromosome 3 of Drosophila melanogaster. 3-day-old larvae trans-heterozygous for these two markers were fed the beverages at different concentrations and for different feeding periods using Drosophila instant medium. Somatic mutations or mitotic recombinations induced in the cells of the wing imaginal discs give rise to mutant single or twin spots on the wing blade of the emerging adult flies showing either the mwh phenotype or/and the flr phenotype. One of the red wines showed a clear genotoxic activity that was not due to its ethanol content. Two herbal teas (Urtica dioica, Achillea millefolium) and black tea (Camellia sinensis) proved to be weakly genotoxic as well. Furthermore, it was shown that quercetin and rutin, two flavonols present in beverages of plant origin, also exhibited weak genotoxic activity in the somatic cells of Drosophila. These results demonstrate that Drosophila in vivo somatic assays can detect the genotoxicity of complex mixtures such as beverages. In particular, it is possible to administer these test materials in the same form as that in which they are normally consumed.
