EFFECT OF SOLVENT WITH VARYING POLARITIES ON PHYTOCHEMICAL EXTRACTION FROM MATURE TEA LEAVES AND ITS EVALUATION USING BIOCHEMICAL, ANTIMICROBIAL AND IN-SILICO APPROACHES

Abstract

Research in tea has been limited to processed or packaged tea. Owing to its economical as well as medicinal importance, our work is focused on 
phytochemical extraction from mature fresh tea leaves based on extracting solvents with varying polarities with the prime focus on bio activity study 
using biochemical, microbial and in-silico approaches. Potent solvents were screened from different qualitative, quantitative and antioxidant tests. 
Antimicrobial screening was done along with its validation using GC-MS and in-silico approaches. Acetone extracts was found to be the most potent 
solvent for extraction followed by methanol and ethanol. Acetone and methanol extracts showed antagonist activity against Staphylococcus sp. with 
Minimum Inhibitory Concentration of 4 mg/ml and 8 mg/ml respectively. Gas chromatography - mass spectrometry identified bioactive compounds 
like Phenol, 3, 5-bis (1, 1-dimethylethyl), caffeine and Vitamin E as the probable compounds as antibacterial agents. Further in-silico results validated 
phenol as the most potent antimicrobial compound with its binding affinity of -7.2 kcal/mol to S. aureus DNA gyrase. Elaborate qualitative and 
quantitative phytochemical profiling thus gave an idea about the potency of particular solvent in extracting specific group of compounds. Bioactivity 
of potent extract against Staphylococcus sp. was recorded out of other bacterial strains investigated. GC-MS analysis of extracts gave insight into the 
type of compounds extracted. Further in- silico results provided interesting insights into the ability of phenol to bind against S. aureus DNA gyrase.