Abstract

Plants have always been a supreme source of drugs and India is endowed with a wide variety of them with high medicinal values. The Quorum Sensing (QS) quenching efficiency of various solvent extracts of Melia dubia seeds was investigated against uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) to screen the competitive inhibitor of SdiA, a transcriptional activator of quorum sensing in E. coli. In this study, potentiality of five different extracts of Melia dubia seeds for quorum sensing inhibitory activity was investigated against uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC). Assays such as cell density, swarming motility, protein, protease, hemolysis, hemagglutination, hydrophobicity and biofilm inhibition were performed. Biofilm, hemolysis and swarming motility were found to be inhibited by 92.1%, 20.9 % and 48.52% respectively, when the medium was supplemented with 30 mg/ml of the ethanolic extract. GC-MS spectrum of the ethanolic extract showed an array of 27 structurally unlinked compounds with natural ligand C8HSL. The docking against QS transcriptional regulator SdiA was predicted by in silico studies and the ligand C6 showed significant activity with -10.8 GScore. In vitro and in silico docking analysis showed fairly a good correlation, suggesting that the ethanolic extract showed potency to attenuate quorum sensing of uropathogenic E. coli. Further studies by in vitro and in vivo strategies are necessary to foresee the quorum quenching effect of the ligands.

Keywords: Quorum Sensing, quorum quenching, Melia dubia, uropathogenic E.coli, SdiA.