Exploration of Potential Antimicrobial Activity of Sea Star Astropecten indicus

The antimicrobial activity of crude tissue sample of sea star Astropecten indicus collected from Mudasal Odai, southeast coast of India was evaluated with the testing human microbial pathogens viz., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, K. oxytoca, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus sp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella paratyphi and S. typhi using solvent system methanol and ethyl acetate at the concentrations of 250, 500 and 1000μl by well diffusion method. The crude methanol extracts showed more active exhibiting broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity than the crude ethyl acetate extracts. The maximum inhibiting zone of 13.44±0.20 was observed for bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the crude obtained from methanol followed by ethyl acetate 11.26±0.09 against Klebsiella pneumonia at the concentration of 1000μl. Moderate activity was found for all the tested strains at 500μl concentration of both the solvents. Bacterial strains K. oxytoca, Staphylococcus aureus has showed no activity at 250μl for methanol and the zone of inhibition for the tested clinical isolates was lesser than the zone of antibiotics used and no zone was found for the negative control. The present work reveals that, sea star A. indicus has potential antimicrobial activity.