Antimicrobial Activity of Two Liverwort Species: Mercantia Polymorpha and Mercantia Emarginata Reinw. Et. Al.

ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF TWO LIVERWORT SPECIES: MERCANTIA POLYMORPHA AND MERCANTIA EMARGINATA REINW. ET. AL.

Allado, Marianne Joy A.

Aya-ay, Sophia Mitz A.

Cabunilas, Jekamiah F.

SEPTEMBER 2017

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

        A few years ago, bryophytes has a lot of uses which helps the environment in different ways. Bryophytes have been used in preventing erosion, pollution, nitrogen fixation and many more. Bryophytes show great promise for cleaning up toxic waste. Pollution, for example, affects almost the whole population in the ecosystem which is also one of the big problems in the whole world. A lot of studies showed many uses of Bryophytes in which it is useful to humans.

        Nowadays, people use drugs for keeping themselves healthy and are also used in other diseases such as skin cancer, tuberculosis, fracture and many more. It is been widely used specifically in China since they are using more herbal medicine than on modern drugs.

Since some literature indicates that liverworts possess various kinds of pharmacological activities, the goal of our work is to evaluate the effect of an extract from this species against bacteria and microfungi.

Objectives of the Study

1. To determine the phytochemical compounds of the two plants: Mercantia
2. To
3. To evaluate the effect of an extract from this species against bacteria and microfungi.

Significance of the Study

        The significance of this study helps in health purposes in humans and may be an alternative for antibiotic, may decrease the rate of infection caused by antibiotic-resistant microorganisms and be used for further studies in genetics.

Hypothesis of the Study

METHODOLOGY

Plant Materials

Sample of plants were collected from Seagull Valley, Barangay Buda, Bukidnon in December and January. Specimens will be identified. Once harvested, the plant material will be maintained in the refrigerator for five days to obtain the exatracts.

Preparation of the Extracts

Plants will be washed with sterile water to remove the dirt and other dead fragments from epiphytic hosts. One gram of plant material will be mashed with the use of a mortar and pestle and extracts will be made 10ml of sterile water or 50% ethanol. The extracts will be then kept in the refrigerator for 18 hours and then centrifuge.

Antimicrobial Activity

Antimicrobial assays will be performed on three species of microorganisms maintained in the Microbial Strain Collection of Latvia (MSCL). Following strains will be used: Bacillus cereus MSCL 330, Escherichia coli MSCL 332 and Staphylococcus aureus MSCL 334. The bacterial species were cultured overnight at 37ºC in LB medium. Inoculum suspensions containing ~106 cells/ml were used for the experiments. The antibacterial assays were carried out by the modified disc-diffusion method (Verpoorte et al., 1983) and microdilution method (Hanel and Raether, 1988; Daouk et al., 1995).