Quercetin, a flavonoid compound which is widely distributed in plants are considered ass beneficial physiologically due to attributed bioactivity such as anti-cancer, immunomodulatory, antidiabetic, and anti-inflammatory. In this study, the quercetin content from the dried Blumea balsamifera L. DC dried leaf was macerated with 95% ethanol and the concentrated extract was purified using Modified Kupchan method and flash chromatography. All fractions were tested for the presence of flavonoids using phytochemical screening and the selected dichloromethane fraction were further purified using another round of flash chromatograph. All resulting fractions and pooled samples were tested for the antioxidant property using the developed Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC)-Bioautography and separated compounds were derivatized with DPPH. Using the optimized TLC-Bioautography method, the quercetin content in the dichloromethane fraction was analyzed and compared with a reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography hyphenated with photodiode array detector (RP-HPLC-PDA). The calculated quercetin content from the pooled sample using TLC-bioautography method is 2.25 mg/ml and from RP-HPLC-PDA is 2.02 mg/ml which was not comparable statistically using unpaired t-test (p<0.05, α=0.05
Quercetin

Plants have been a major source of natural products for sustaining human health. The use of the different parts of the plant as infusions, decoctions, extracts, and powders are being employed in the treatment of different diseases in humans, plants, and animals. One property of great significance in terms of therapeutic treatments, especially with the emergence of multi-drug resistant microbes, is the antimicrobial activity. A new promising source of antimicrobials that demonstrate novel mechanisms of therapeutic strategies is low molecular weight peptides. In this study, the antimicrobial activities of Mimosa pudica crude and partially purified peptide extracts against Gram-negative Enterobacter cloacae ATCC 23355 and Enterobacter aerogenes ATCC 13048, and Gram-positive Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 12228 using resazurin colorimetric assay and tricine SDS-PAGE bioautography were reported. M. pudica crude and partially purified extracts exhibited antimicrobial activity against all the bacteria tested. Specifically, the peptide that was partially purified from M. pudica with a molecular weight of 5.14 kDa inhibited the growth of Enterobacter cloacae.
Antimicrobial Peptides