Cui YY. Selective procedure for the instant identification of cellular apoptosis induced by natural products. World J Methodol 2025; 15(3): 98201 [DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v15.i3.98201]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Ying-Yu Cui, PhD, Associate Professor, Teacher, Department of Cell Biology, Institute of Medical Genetics, State Key Laboratory of Cardiology, Tongji University School of Medicine, No. 500 Zhennan Road, Putuo District, Shanghai 200331, China. yycui@tongji.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Cell Biology
Article-Type of This Article
Basic Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Methodol. Sep 20, 2025; 15(3): 98201 Published online Sep 20, 2025. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v15.i3.98201
Selective procedure for the instant identification of cellular apoptosis induced by natural products
Ying-Yu Cui
Ying-Yu Cui, Department of Cell Biology, Institute of Medical Genetics, State Key Laboratory of Cardiology, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200331, China
Author contributions: Cui YY designed and performed the research, and analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.
Supported by 2023 Key R&D Projects of Tongji University, No. 150029607160-24323; and Industrial Key Program Foundation of Guangdong Province: R&D of Natural Novel Anticancer Drugs, No. 2004B10401033.
Institutional review board statement: No human and/or animal subjects was involved in the present study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ying-Yu Cui, PhD, Associate Professor, Teacher, Department of Cell Biology, Institute of Medical Genetics, State Key Laboratory of Cardiology, Tongji University School of Medicine, No. 500 Zhennan Road, Putuo District, Shanghai 200331, China. yycui@tongji.edu.cn
Received: June 20, 2024 Revised: November 19, 2024 Accepted: December 23, 2024 Published online: September 20, 2025 Processing time: 259 Days and 1.4 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Recently, the identification of cell apoptosis induced by natural products has become research hotspot and frontier in the biopharmaceutical and food industries under the umbrella of global green development worldwide. Traditionally, cell apoptosis is identified using morphological, biochemical, and cell cycle experiments, which is time consuming, and experimental materials are not from the same group, and it is very hard to ensure the identity and veracity of results of former and latter experiments.
AIM
To establish a selective, instant, and practical protocol to identify cell apoptosis induced by natural products.
METHODS
A one transient cell processing procedure (OTCPP) was used to detect human colorectal cancer LoVo cell apoptosis after treatment with Pinus massoniana bark extract (PMBE) at the morphological, biochemical, and cell cycle levels. The methods used included treatment with DNA gel electrophoresis, fluorescence microscopy, and flow cytometry.
RESULTS
In PMBE-treated LoVo cells, we observed a DNA ladder on gel electrophoresis and fluorescence microscopy revealed "nuclear shrinkage, chromatin condensation or fragmentation". In addition, flow cytometry showed an "obvious apoptosis curve". Thus OTCPP achieved synchronous detection of the morphology, biochemistry, cell cycle, and the DNA content of the cells.
CONCLUSION
OTCPP can quickly identify apoptosis and measure the apoptosis rate, thereby unifying qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Core Tip: According to the global green development hypothesis, the identification of cell apoptosis induced by natural products is a research hotspot. However, routine laboratory identification of apoptosis suffers from experimental errors and poor repeatability. Herein, we explored the simultaneous morphological, biochemical and molecular identification of apoptosis, while reducing experimental errors. We established a protocol to instantly identify apoptosis following natural product treatment, termed one transient cell processing procedure (OTCPP), comprising eleven steps. It could identify apoptosis of cultured LoVo cells in a little as 4 days. The OTCPP procedure is easy, rapid and high efficient, especially for researchers in developing countries.
