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Antibacterial and Antifungal Agents of Higher Plants

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Natural Bio-active Compounds

Abstract

The extensive search for therapeutic agents derived from higher plants has recently accelerated owing to the antibiotic resistance crisis, which is a serious warning to human healthcare worldwide. It is estimated that antibiotic-resistant infections will lead to nearly ten million yearly deaths at the global level by the year 2050. Thus, it is wise to search for new alternative antibiotics sources derived from higher plants to tackle this alarming antibiotic resistance crisis issue. Amongst the 250,000–500,000 plant species available in the World, only a small percentage (1–10%) of them have been explored by man. This data shows that there is a great opportunity for exploring these higher plants, which are rich in a wide variety of phytochemicals, and could be used as a good source to develop new antibacterial and antifungal agents. Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) suspects about four billion humans (about 80% of the world population) currently use herbal medicine as their primary healthcare. Therefore, this chapter is designated to discuss in detail the prospects of higher plants as antimicrobial agents. Also, this chapter attempts to summarize the antibiotic resistance crisis, current status of higher plants as antimicrobial agents, the extraction process of phytochemicals, in vitro and in vivo antimicrobial activity evaluations and the contribution of important phytochemicals, such as polyphenols, as antimicrobial agents. The methods presented in this chapter are illustrated for the bacterial and fungal model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

    Balasupramaniam Kirubakari,  Shanmugapriya, Thiagarajan Sangeetha, Soundararajan Vijayarathna, Chiuan Herng Leow, Lai Ngit Shin & Sreenivasan Sasidharan

  2. Dental Research & Training Unit, and Oral Cancer Research and Coordinating Centre (OCRCC), Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Yeng Chen

  3. Nanomedicine-Laboratory of Immunology and Molecular Biomedical Research (LIMBR), School of Medicine (SoM), Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia

    Jagat R. Kanwar

  4. Department of Biotechnology, East West First Grade College of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

    Mallappa Kumara Swamy

  5. School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

    Sreeramanan Subramaniam

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  1. Balasupramaniam Kirubakari
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  2. Shanmugapriya
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Correspondence to Sreenivasan Sasidharan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, Gandhi Faiz-e-Aam College, Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Mohd Sayeed Akhtar

  2. Department of Biotechnology, East West First Grade College of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

    Mallappa Kumara Swamy

  3. Department of Crop Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Uma Rani Sinniah

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Kirubakari, B. et al. (2019). Antibacterial and Antifungal Agents of Higher Plants. In: Akhtar, M., Swamy, M., Sinniah, U. (eds) Natural Bio-active Compounds. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7154-7_16

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