The investigation of the aerial parts of Haplophyllum laeviusculum (Rutaceae), a perennial herb native to Iran, afforded three alkaloids, skimmianine (1), lunamarine (2), ribalinidine (3) and and two common sterols, γ-sitosterol and campesterol. The structures of compounds were identified by using spectroscopic methods by using UV, IR, NMR, MS spectra and also by comparison with previous works. There has been no detail phytochemical investigation report on the plant carried previously. This is the first report on the identification of skimmianine (1), lunamarine (2) from genus Haplophyllum.
The leaves and stem barks extracts of four plant species, Melicope confusa, M. clemensiae, M. lunu-ankenda and M. latifolia were screened for their antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities. Almost all extracts of M. clemensia exhibited moderate growth inhibition when tested against the three pathogenic fungi. However, when tested against pathogenic bacteria, the three leaves extracts showed strong activity against methicillin resistant S. aureus and moderate for the other bacteria. In the antioxidant assay by using DPPH, the three leaves extracts of M. lunu-ankenda exhibited significant activity with with IC50 values of 7.8, 15.6 and 7.8 μg/mL. In addition, the petroleum ether leaves extract of M. clemensiae and the chloroform leaves extract of M. lunu-ankenda showed strong cytotoxic activity when tested against human promyelocytic leukemia (HL60) cell line with IC50 values of 2.8 and 0.8 μg/mL, respectively.
Air-dried leaves of both Glycosmis citrifolia and Glycosmis elongata collected from Bogor Botanical Garden, Indonesia were individually extracted with chloroform to give dark viscous extracts after solvent removal. Column chromatographic separation of the extract of G. citrifolia yielded 5(6)-glutene-3α-ol, two sets conformers, (E)-dambullin and (Z)-dambullin, and (E)-methyldambullin and (Z)-methyldambullin. Similar treatment of the extract of G. elongata gave skimmianine and arborinine. The structures of the compounds were elucidated based on spectroscopic data and comparison with published reports.