New Sesquiterpene Lactone via Fungal Transformation of Rhizopus oryzae KX685359: Antimicrobial In-Vitro and In-Silico Study.

There is an urgent need for new chemical structures to develop drugs as a result of the increasing number of viruses and pathogenic bacteria that have the ability to resist established treatments. Phytochemical screening on Pulicaria species have yielded a lot of compounds specially terpenoids, importantly though, some compounds have been found to have a potent bioactivity. Pulicaria undulata plants considered as a productive source for the effective biologically secondary metabolites. Herein, 2α-Hydroxyalantolactone (1), a major secondary metabolite, was enzymatically transformed by Rhizopus oryzae KX685359 fungal isolate. The fungal transformation affords a new transformed metabolite2-(alantolactonyloxy) propanoic acid (2) and know alantolactone-2α-acetate (3). Antimicrobial assessment of the substrate and transformed compounds disclosed the moderate antimicrobial activity of compound (3) against Gram-negative E. coli, Gram-positive L. cereus and the unicellular yeast C. albicans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]