Title

In vitro anti-acetylcholinesterase activity of an aqueous extract of Unicaria tomentosa and in silico study of its active constituents

Authors

Suman Chowdhury, Shivani, Suresh Kumar*

Affiliation

University School of Biotechnology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Dwarka, New Delhi;

Email

Suresh Kumar - Email:
sureshkumar@ipu.ac.in; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received March 22, 2016; Accepted March 30, 2016; Published June 15, 2016

Depletion of acetylcholine in the central nervous system (CNS) is responsible for memory loss and cognition deficit. Enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is responsible for destruction of acetylcholine (Ach) in the brain. Many herbal plant extracts have been investigated for their potential use in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by inhibiting AChE and upregulating the levels of Ach. The current study investigated the anti-acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity of an aqueous extract of Unicaria tomentosa bark which has not been reported so far in the literature. The in vitro study of an aqueous extract of U. tomentosa showed maximum inhibition of 76.2±0.002 % at 0.4mg/ml of final concentration with an IC50 = 0.112 mg/ml. The mechanism of inhibition was elucidated by kinetic study which showed mixed type of inhibition, this might be due to the presence of various phytoconstituents such as oxindole alkaloids present in an aqueous extract. Based on molecular structure of phytoconstituents obtained from U. tomentosa known from the relevant literature, in-silico molecular docking study was performed against AChE protein to validate the
results.

Keywords

Anti-cholinesterase, Acetylcholinesterase, Unicaria tomentosa, Ellman’s assay, Enzyme Kinetics, Lineweaver-Burk plot, Oxindole alkaloids, Molecular docking, Schrodinger.

Citation

Chowdhury et al. Bioinformation 12(3): 112-118 (2016)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.