Background: Green vegetable soya beans, known as Maodou in China, are supplied as vegetable-type fruits of the soybean plant. Previous study indicated that green vegetable soya beans exhibited antioxidative and anti-inflammatory activities. However, the material basis and pharmacological activities of green soybean plant were not unravelled clearly. In this study, we investigated the chemical ingredients and their pharmacological activities.
Results: Investigation of the chemical ingredients indicated that two new isoflavones, 2'-hydroxyerythrin A (1), and daidzein-7-O-β-d-{6″-[(E)-but-2-enoyl]}glycoside (2), together with seven known ones - 7,4'-dihydroxy-6-methoxyisoflavone (3), daidzein (4), daidzin (5), genistein (6), formononetin (7), ononin (8), and isoerythrinin A (9) - were obtained. The structures of compounds 1-9 were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic and chemical analysis. We evaluated the antimicrobial efficacies and free-radical scavenging potential of the isolated compounds (1-9). Compounds 1 and 9 exhibited the most pronounced efficacy against the tested bacterial strains with IC50 values ranging from 10.6 to 22.6 μg mL-1 . The isolated compounds showed moderate radical scavenging properties with compound 6 being the most active, followed by compounds 3, 1 and 4.
Conclusions: This study indicated that the isoflavones from soya beans could be considered as potential antioxidants or antimicrobials in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.
Keywords: Glycine max; antimicrobial activity; antioxidant activity; green vegetable soya beans; isoflavones; structure identification.
© 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.