A monitoring technique of piezoelectric impedance analysis used in tea polyphenols (TP) antimutagenic characteristics

A new method was proposed for studying antimutagenic characteristics of Tea Polyphenols (TP) using piezoelectric impedance analysis during the Salmonella typhimurium strain TA100 growth process in the presence of mutagen 4-methylnitrosamino-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (abbreviated NNK). Compared with the general method of antimutagenic investigation, the proposed method provided real-time, multidimensional response information about the antimutagenic characteristics during the bacterial growth process. The results showed that TP was allowed to be antimutagenic at the lowest concentration of 0.25 μg/ml, and the inhibitory effect of TP presented a linear relationship with its dosage in the range of 0.25–2.5 μg/ml. And the relationship between the bacterial growth kinetic parameters and the TP dosage was also obtained. The present method provided a new approach for studying microbial antimutagenic characteristics.