Study on microbial activities of myxomycete plasmodial extracts

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study antimicrobial activities of crude extracts of several myxomycete plasmodia. MeOH:Chl and MeOH extracts of three myxomycete species (D. squamulosum, Ph. flavicomum and Ph. oblatum) were tested on three antibiotic resistant pathogens (Candida albicans, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus). The MeOH:Chl extracts (4 mg/ml) showed no inhibition against the tested pathogens. However, the MeOH extracts had remarkable antimicrobial activity. Especially, the extracts of Ph. oblatum were found to have high antifungal activity against C. albicans, by having 8 folds smaller of minimum inhibitory concentration. This finding indicated that myxomycetes would be a promising source of new antimicrobial, especially antifungal compounds. There have been a few researches attempting to investigate antimicrobial activity of myxomycetes. However, most of those researches used myxomycete fruiting bodies as the sample sources. Since, myxomycete fruiting bodies occur with limited number under natural conditions that makes a huge challenge in having sufficient sample size for intensive researches. The data from this research provided an evidence that plasmodia of myxomycete would be a very promising sources for similar researches. Key words: antibacterial activity, antifungal activities, plasmodium, methanol extracts, myxomycetes.