Figure 2. Citral inhibits proliferation and causes cell cycle arrest.

A, MTT assays were conducted with four cell lines, A2780 (upper left panel), ECC-1 (upper right panel), OVCAR-3 (lower left panel) and SKOV-3 (lower right panel) to determine the anti-proliferative effect of citral. All cell lines were treated with the designated concentrations of citral for 24, 48 and 72 h. After incubation, MTT reagent was added and formazan formation was monitored by reading the absorbance in each well at 570 nm. Each data point is average of eight separate readings and represents three independent replicate experiments. Statistical analyses of the data are provided in Supplementary File 1. B, ECC-1 (upper panel) and OVCAR-3 (lower panel) cells were treated with citral (50 μM) for the designated time points. After treatment, cells were fixed, stained with propidium iodide and analyzed by flow cytometry. Results with both cell lines showed an increase in percentage of cells in G1 phase and decrease in cells in the S phase following citral treatment. Each bar is average of three replicates and p values in the bar graph provide statistical significance of these results.