Antimicrobial and Antibacterial Agents

In nature, plants produce primary metabolites such as proline, glycose, etc. in order to improve its survival while under abiotic and biotic stress conditions, the plant produces secondary metabolites which are main classified of terpene, alkaloid and phenolic compound for adaptation in the environment. In Boraginaceae family, Echium italicum, Alkanna tinctoria, Lithospermum erytrorhizon plants produce phenolic compounds such as shikonin from hairy roots. Among them, Shikonin, which has antibacterial, anticancer and woundhealing activity, is still used in cosmetic and pharmaceutic industry in China and Japan. Hence, aim of this study concerns the investigation of antimicrobial effect of deoxyshikonin which was produced by hairy root culture under abiotic stress conditions. For antibacterial analysis, DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) was used as negative and chloramphenicol (C) utilized as positive control. According to our results, deoxyshikonin at 20 mg/ml showed in vitro antibacterial effect against Escherichia coli ATCC 8739, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 29213, Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 15442.