Abstract
The research work presented in this study is mainly concerned with the bioactivity-directed phytochemical and biological evaluation of Persea duthiei. Persea duthiei is a typical medicinal plant used to treat a variety of ailments such as asthma, edema, and bronchitis. Ethyl acetate, n-hexane, n-butanol, and compounds that are soluble in water were used to examine the antibacterial as well as antifungal capacities of the plant. The antibacterial activity of the soluble parts of ethyl acetate and n-hexane against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi, and Bacillus subtilis was high, even though there was no activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Likewise, the n-hexane and ethyl acetate fractions were found to have substantial efficacy against several fungal strains such as Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigates, Fusarium solani, and Aspergillus niger, but not against Candida glabrata. Among the studied fractions, the ethyl acetate soluble fraction had potent antibacterial activity against all of the tested species. This fraction was submitted to phytochemical analysis utilizing various chromatographic methods for the extraction of various pure components. As a consequence, four compounds were isolated, and their structures were elucidated using various spectroscopic methods such as IR, EIMS, HR-EIMS, H-1-NMR, C-13-NMR, NOESY, COSY, HMBC, and HMQC. Urs-12-en-3 beta-ol (alpha-amyrine) (1), Urs-12-ene-2 alpha-3 beta-diol (chamaedrydiol) (2), 3 beta-hydroxyurs-12-en-28-aldehyde (ursolic aldehyde) (3), and 12-oleanex-3 beta-ol (beta-amyrine) (4) were extracted. Compounds 1, 2, 3, and 4 were examined for antibacterial and antifungal activity and found to have zones of inhibition ranging from 0 to 11 mm against tested bacteria strains and percent inhibition ranging from 0 to 25 percent against fungus strains. Compounds 1 and 4 showed strong efficacy against the investigated fungal species, with a 25% inhibition rate. In the case of antibacterial activity, compounds 4 and 1 showed potent activity with zones of inhibition of 11 mm and 10 mm, respectively. Compounds 2 and 3 were observed to have nonsignificant antimicrobial activity. However, docking studies reflected the complex formation of compound 1 with beta-hydroxyacyl-ACP dehydratase HadAB and S. aureus tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase and compound 2 with topoisomerase II DNA gyrase complex, and they were reported to have antibacterial properties. Similarly, compound 4 was discovered to be well compatible with the lanosterol 14-demethylase (fungal enzyme) and is thus regarded as having antifungal capabilities. Chimera software was used to identify the binding pockets of these complexes. These results indicated that Persea duthiei is a valuable source of medicinal compounds for medication development.