PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING AND ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES OF CRUSTOSE LICHEN FROM KALYANI UNIVERSITY CAMPUS, WEST BENGAL, INDIA

Lichens are universally distributed organism occurring in varied climatic condition ranging from the poles to the tropics in earth. The study of lichen remains quite frowzy throughout the world. Though the importance of lichen in an ecosystem is very high in its own way. Lichens are just like miniature sponges that take up everything that comes their path, including air pollution Fleishner TL. (1994). They synthesise many useful secondary metabolites. Among the synthesised metabolites, many of them have antiviral and antibacterial activity. To keep this view in mind the present study has done to to evaluate the antibacterial activity of two different crustose lichen species collected from Kalyani University Campus, WB. Since this is the first time study of antimicrobial activity of Cryptothecia striata and Cryptothecia scripta.