Nell publishes article on medicinal properties of wild bergamot

Bryan Nell, assistant professor of chemistry at Ripon College, recently co-authored an article on the medicinal properties of wild bergamot published in the Journal of Medicinal Food.

“This was a long process from project conception to publication, but I am really happy to have had the opportunity to work across disciplines and institutions,” Nell said.

The article titled “Monarda Fistulosa Flower Extract Decreases Interleukin-6 Production by Lipopolysaccharide-Stimulated RAW 264.7 Murine Macrophages,” stemmed from a University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) student’s idea to investigate traditional medicinal plants used by Indigenous peoples, specifically looking at the fever-reducing properties of Monarda fistulosa, commonly known as wild bergamot or bee balm.

Sierra Paske, now a chemistry graduate student at the University of Montana, came up with the idea for the project while an undergraduate at UMM, working with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kara Nell, now employed by Kimberly-Clark in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Additional contributors to the project include Makenna Gerold, another former undergraduate at UMM, who was focused on the biological aspects alongside UMM Associate Professor of Biology Rachel Gibbons Johnson.

“From a biological perspective, we were looking at how an extract of the Monarda fistulosa flowers impacted the anti-inflammatory response,” Nell said. “On the chemistry side, we used mass spectrometry data and molecular networking computational methods to putatively identify some of the chemical compounds in the flower extract.”

Nell said this type of research is not his usual area of focus, but he found it enjoyable to explore new mass spectrometry data analysis methods and gain insights into plant metabolites. He has utilized this data and incorporated the analysis techniques into his teaching for his Chemical Instrumentation course at Ripon.

“I hope that people will read this and have an appreciation for how many of the chemical compounds we use in Western medicine are either directly from plants or derived from plants in some way,” Nell said. “Additionally, it is important to highlight how Indigenous peoples have worked in concert with nature to use natural resources for medicinal purposes.”