Structures, Antioxidation Mechanism, and Antioxidation Test of the Common Natural Antioxidants in Plants

线粒体功能异常和外界刺激引起细胞内活性氧(reactive oxygen species，ROS)含量的长期增高会对脂质体、蛋白和DNA造成损伤，可能诱发癌症、心血管疾病、风湿性关节炎和各种神经性疾病等。日常食用和药用的植物中含有的维生素、胡萝卜素和多酚类化合物等种类众多的抗氧化剂能帮助清除过量ROS，是近年来食品化学、药学和生命科学等领域的一个研究热点。本文主要从化学角度介绍常见天然抗氧化剂的结构和抗氧化机理，重点是从化学检测实验、细胞实验和动物实验三个层面综述抗氧化性能的检测方法和化学反应机理。试图帮助读者正确理解抗氧化反应的化学本质，有助于合理组合使用抗氧化检测方法获得可靠的评价结果。最后对天然抗氧化剂研究中存在的主要问题以及未来的热点方向进行了分析和展望。 Excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) caused by mitochondrial dysfunction and adverse external stimulus would damage the liposomes, proteins, even DNA in cells, which is one of the lead causes for cancer, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and a variety of neurological diseases. The most important natural antioxidants are the vitamins, carotenes and polyphenol compounds in daily consumption and medicinal plants. These antioxidants can eliminate the ROS effectively and have become a research hotspot recently. This article reviews the structures and antioxidation mechanisms of these important natural antioxidants from a chemical perspective, and focuses on the available test methods of the toxicity and antioxidant properties at three levels, i.e. chemical test, cell experiments and animal experiments, respectively. We believe that this article may help the readers to understand correctly the chemical nature of the antioxidants’ antioxidation, and guide researches to choose proper test methodologies to obtain reliable evaluation results. Finally, some future opportunities and challenges in the antioxidant field are discussed to our un-derstanding.