Skin Anti-Aging Activities of Bacteriochlorophyll a from Photosynthetic Bacteria, Rhodobacter sphaeroides

In this work, the anti-aging skin effects of bacteriochlorophyll a isolated from Rhodobacter sphaeroides are first reported, with notably low cytotoxicity in the range of 1% to 14% in adding 0.00078 (% (w/w)) of the extracts, compared with the normal growth of both human dermal fibroblast and keratinocyte cells without any treatment as a control. The highest production of procollagen from human fibroblast cells (CCD-986sk) was observed as 221.7 ng/ml with 0.001 (% (w/w)) of bacteriochlorophyll a, whereas 150 and 200 ng/ml of procollagen production resulted from addition of 0.001 (% (w/w)) of the photosynthetic bacteria. The bacteriochlorophyll-a-induced TNF-alpha production increased to 63.8%, which was lower secretion from HaCaT cells than that from addition of 0.00005 (% (w/w)) of bacteriochlorophyll a. Additionally, bacteriochlorophyll a upregulated the expression of genes related to skin anti-aging (i.e., keratin 10, involucrin, transglutaminase-1, and MMPs), by up to 4-15 times those of the control. However, crude extracts from R. sphaeroides did not enhance the expression level of these genes. Bacteriochlorophyll a showed higher antioxidant activity of 63.8% in DPPH free radical scavenging than those of water, ethanol, and 70% ethanol extracts (14.0%, 57.2%, and 12.6%, respectively). It was also shown that the high antioxidant activity could be attributed to the skin anti-aging effect of bacteriochlorophyll a, although R. sphaeroides itself would not exhibit significant anti-aging activities.