Actually I am extracting essential oil from plant sample using ethylacetate. But its very sticky and I am looking for the best solvent do dissolve the sticky sample.
I think you have to use an organic solvent. In this case, the DMSO is a good solvent to dissolve the oil.
Water (steam) is usually be used if you just want to get essential oil directly. Because, if you use the organic solvent like DMSO I guest pull out the chlorophyll and other plant tissue, resulting in a highly colored or thick/viscous extract, so require next purification. I suggest you try diethyl eter also. It was good take record as strong essential oil solvent.
In the case of dissolving your extract for use in a cell-based assay, DMSO would be the organic solvent of choice. However, it will probably not be possible to test the pure DMSO solution in the assay. Generally. for cell-based assays I would be cautios exposing the cells to a DMSO concentration above 1 %. I will recommend to investigate whether the chosen concentration of DMSO affects the assay output. This could be done by including a solvent control treatment in each experiment.
I agree with the previous comment, that you can probably obtain a more pure essential oil by steam destillation. Extraction with ethyl acetate will yield an extract with a considerable content of phenolics and more hydrophobic constituents.
DMSO is used to dissolve essential oils in a concentration Less than or equal to 0.001% and use a control DMSO to remove the activity of DMSO eventually.
The essential oils are insoluble in water.
As Ahmad Safarudin and Lasse Saaby mentioned, the extract you obtained is not only essential oil. I would recommend you to use a simple method, steam distillation for essential oil. Once you obtain essential oil, you probably use water-cosolvent system (DMSO, propylene glycol, poly ethylene glycol, glycerin, etc.) to dissolve it. I am not sure for cell assay. I experience only with antimicrobial assay. DMSO can be added up to 10% without any inhibitory effect on microbes. If it cannot dissolve essential oil, 2 or 3 more co-solvents can be added based on lipophilicity of essential oil. In cell based assay, it is important to check the effect of solvent system on cell viability.
DMSO, ethanol, methanol, acetone, and ether are the best. Better to sissolve 1 microlitter of oul in 1 mililiter of solvent, vortex for 1 minute and use freshly. Tq
The important point during cell treatment is that the final solvent concentration should not exceeds 0.1%. TQ
essential oil best extracted with water, thriugh hydrodistillation, with fresh aroma,
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