Photochemical investigation on the stem barks of brucea anti dysenteric and evaluation of its antimicrobial activities

Abstract

Medicinal plants have played crucial role as a source of traditional medicine in Ethiopia from the time immemorial to combat different ailments and human sufferings. The plant sample was collected; air dried, powdered and then soaked in petroleum ether, chloroform, acetone and methanol by using sequential method at room temperature. The crude extracts were evaluated against four bacterial strains Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922) Bacillus subtilis (ATCC 6633) Pseudomonas auriginosa (ATCC 27853) Staphalococous aureus (ATCC 25923) and two fungal strains Candida albicuns and Fusarium spp. The chloroform crude extract exhibited highest antimicrobial activity. Thus, this extract was subjected to column chromatography over silica gel eluted with n-hexane with increasing amounts of ethyl acetate and further purification was done by sephadex LH-20 chromatography, which resulted with the isolation of two compounds: compound ( N F1 ) a n d compound ( N F2 ) .The structure of the isolated compound was established using spectroscopic techniques 1 HNMR, DEPT-135 and 13 C-NMR. therefore, the partially characterized compounds were identified as compound (NF1) 6-(5-ethyl-6-methylheptan-2-yl)-4a-methyl-1,2,3,4,4a,4b,5,6,8a,9-decahydrophenanthren-2ol and compound (NF2) (5E,9E)-(((6E,11E)-2-oxooctadeca-6,11-dien-1-yl)oxy)methylheptadeca-5,9-dienoate. The project work has shown that the stem barks of Brucea antidysenterica are rich sources of compounds with good potential for further biological and chemical research. Thus, the researchers recommend further studies on isolation of other fractions