Ramasare Prasad
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India
Title: A novel anti-bacterial and antifungal protein from Euphorbia hirta
Biography
Biography: Ramasare Prasad
Abstract
In recent years, there has been sudden increase in bacterial and fungal infections mainly due to infection caused by opportunistic and drug-resistant pathogens particularly in immuno-compromised host and patients who has gone for transplant surgery. A therapeutic molecule with inherent properties of both antimicrobial as well as immuno-modulatory activity will be more effective in controlling and treating the antimicrobial infections in general and in immuno-compromised hosts in particular. As such, novel molecules will have dual action; the first is by killing the pathogen and secondly by boosting the immune system of the host. But finding such molecules is a difficult task. However, the observation that several antimicrobial proteins/peptides besides their antimicrobial action also found to have imuno-modulatory effects provide strong basis that such proteins do exist in nature. Keeping this fact in mind, an attempt has been made in the present study to search for such a novel protein from Euphorbia hirta a well-known medicinal plant. A novel protein with antimicrobial and immuno-modulatory activities has been isolated and purified from E. hirta leaves. Characterization of purified protein by different biochemical methods (SDS PAGE and HPLC) and biophysical methods (N-terminal sequencing, and mass spectrometric technique, revealed that it is 53 kDa monomeric proteins. It found to have potent antimicrobial and immuno-modulatory activities as confirmed by various standard assays, TEM and SEM and in vitro and in vivo studies. Attempt was made to identify the protein using bioinformatics tools. The results and finding will be presented and discuss.