Isolation and characterization of bioactive compounds from root extracts of Helinus mystacinus

Abstract

The study was focused on isolation and characterization of bioactive compounds from methanol and 80% methanol/H 2O extracts of Helinus mystacinus (root). The fresh plant material was collected from Jren district, Jimma town and shed dried in laboratory, the dried plant part crushed was ground. The powdered plant sample was extracted with methanol and 80% methanol and yield 2.4% and 1.4% crude extracts respectively. The biological activity of the extracts were done using standard pathogenic organisms such as staphylococcus aureus(OSM 7346),, Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (DSMZ 1117) and Salmonella typhimurium (ATCC 13311). Methanol extracts which relatively showed better antibacterial activity than 80% methanol/H 2 O subjected to column chromatographic separation of its components using mixture of chloroform: ethyl acetate as eluting solvent. Four compounds (HM I, HM II, HM III and HM IV) were isolated among these only HM II was fully characterized based on physical property, spectroscopic data(IR, 1 H-NMR, 13 C-NMR and DEPT-135) and in comparison with literature reports. Compound HM II identified as be linoleic acid. The antibacterial activity test result of these isolated compounds showed that they were active on all bacterial strains than the crude extracts. Therefore, further study is recommended to isolate and characterize more bioactive compounds from Helinus mystacinus