African Journal of
Biochemistry Research

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Biochem. Res.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1996-0778
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJBR
  • Start Year: 2007
  • Published Articles: 424

Full Length Research Paper

Investigation of antimicrobial and plasma coagulation property of some molluscan ink extracts: Gastropods and cephalopods

R. Vennila, R. K. Rajesh kumar*, S. Kanchana, M. Arumugam and T. Balasubramanian
Center of Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Annamalai University, Portonovo, Tamil Nadu, India.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Published: 31 January 2010

Abstract

The ink secretion of molluscan species was identified as one of the novel sources of bioactive compounds. Aqueous ink extracts of Dollabella auricularia inhibited the growth of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. In addition to D. auricularia, Octopus vulgaris and Sepia aculeate ink samples showed antifungal activity. The antimicrobial activities of the samples were not due to the presence of protease activity. All tested ink samples were not shown the property of agglutinating chicken erythrocytes. The D. auricularia ink fluid was haemotoxic which shows 100% lyses of chicken RBC with the minimum concentration of protein 4.4 µg/ml. In plasma coagulation assay S. aculeate ink showed procoagulant property and it coagulated chicken plasma within 180 s; all the remaining samples took more than 5 min for clot formation. Taken together, all these data suggest that, the presence of a number of factors in the ink secretion of mollusk and some of which are proteins in the range from 62 to 249 kDa which are all playing specific roles in the chemical defense mechanism of inking mollusk.

 

Key words: Anti-microbial activity, aqueous extract, molluscan ink, procoagulant, protease activity.