GC-MS ANALYSIS OF BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS AND ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF CRYPTOCOCCUS RAJASTHANENSIS KY627764 ISOLATED FROM BOMBYX MORI GUT MICROFLORA

The insect gut microflora acts as a large reservoir of bioactive natural products as a diversity of resident microflora is found to be symbiotically associated with the insect. The present study reports the bioactive chemical compounds and the antimicrobial nature of the yeast isolated from the insect Bombyx mori gut. The yeast is identified as Cryptococcus rajasthanensis by Molecular characterization. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) studies of the chloroform and ethyl acetate crude yeast extracts indicated a number of functional groups like alcoholic, phenolic, ester, aldehydic, etc. that accounts for the bioactive nature of the extracts. The Gas chromatography-Mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) analysis of the crude extracts revealed a large number of bioactive compounds of high and low molecular weight that are considered biologically active. Some of the biologically active molecules like phenol 2,4-bis(1,1-dimethylethyl), 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid dibutyl ester, celidoniol deoxy, nonadecane, tetratetracontane, 2-methyloctacosane and pentadecane bearing antimicrobial property were detected in both chloroform and ethyl acetate extracts. Furthermore, the crude extracts were subjected to antimicrobial assay by agar well diffusion method and are found to be antimicrobial against four pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and two fungi Candida albicans and Aspergillus flavus. The chloroform extract showed maximum inhibition for E. coli and minimum for A. flavus.