Abstract
Marine macroalgae are considered as an excellent source of bioactive compounds which has a broad range of biological activities including antibacterial and antioxidant. Crude methanolic and water extracts of 19 marine algal species (6 Chlorophyta, 8 Phaeophyta and 5 Rhodophyta) collected from the western coast of Libya were evaluated for antibacterial activity against pathogenic bacteria (4 Gram-positive, 4 Gram-nega- tive). The extracts showed a significant antibacterial activity against Gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus spp., and Staphylococcus epidermidis) as well as Gram negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Klebsiella spp., and Pseudomonas aerugi- nosa). The algal aqueous and methanolic extracts displayed different degrees of antimicrobial activities against different bacteria, in some cases methanolic extracts showed higher antibacterial activity than aqueous extracts. Among tested algae, Brown algae namely Cystoseira crinite exhibited the highest antibacterial activity among tested algal species.
Highlights
There is an increasing demand for therapeutic drugs from the vastly biodiverse natural resources
Marine macroalgae are considered as an excellent source of bioactive compounds which has a broad range of biological activities including antibacterial [4,5], antifungal [6], antiviral [5,7], antitumorals [8], antioxidant [9,10,11], and antiinflammatories [12,13,14]
The qualitative phytochemical screening of the crude powder of 19 algae was carried out in order to assess the presence of bioactive compounds which might have antibacterial potency
Summary
There is an increasing demand for therapeutic drugs from the vastly biodiverse natural resources. Marine macroalgae compose a natural source of a variety of drugs for pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic applications including carotenoids, terpenoids, steroids, amino acids, phlorotannins, phenolic compounds, halogenated ketones, alkanes and cyclic polysulphides [15,16]. Many bioactive compounds of marine algae with antimicrobial activity have been isolated and some of them are under investigation to protect life-style related diseases, some of these compounds are sterols, terpenoids, polysaccharides, peptides, proteins, vitamins, acrylic acid, terpenes, chlorophyllides, phenols, heterocyclic compounds, halogenated ketones and alkanes and cyclic polysulphides [7, 15,18,19,20]. Libya has a long coastline and abundant natural resources of marine algae with very high species diversity [21], there are only few reports on the screening of Libyan marine algae for antibacterial activity
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