Honors Program

Midway Honors

Date of Award

12-2010

Thesis Professor(s)

Chu-Ngi Ho

Thesis Professor Department

Chemistry

Thesis Reader(s)

Marina Roginskaya, James Bouldin

Abstract

Polyphenols are a group of compounds found naturally in plants and they provide much of the flavor, color, and taste to fruits, vegetables, seeds, and other parts of the plants They also act as antioxidants which provide numerous health benefits by protecting cells against damage caused by free radicals. Their antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and anti-allergenic properties have also contributed to the prevention of degenerative diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases and cancers by slowing the rate of oxidative stress on cells. This study was aimed at the identification and quantitation of a specific polyphenol, quercetin, found in grapes commonly purchased at grocery stores to show their benefits toward human health. Samples of red and black grapes were collected and their polyphenolic compounds were extracted from the pulp using an organic solvent extraction method. High pressure liquid chromatography (hplc) was then used for the determination and quantitation of quercetin in each of samples. Quercetin was identified in both the red and black grape samples at retention times around five minutes. Due to technical problems with the HPLC instrument, only estimates of the amount of quercetin in each of the analyzed samples could be calculated with the highest estimated yield being 8.29 mg/mL of quercetin in black grape extract #4.

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

Included in

Chemistry Commons

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