Novel Antibiotics in mango ginger (Curcuma amada) - Alternative Medicine Science Fair Project

Materials and Equipment: Mango ginger, organic solvents, bacterial species, fungal species, luria’s broth, agar, rotary evaporator, sep-pak columns, fluorescent microscope, 96-well plate and bio-tek plate reader, standard lab equipment

Techniques: Sep-Pak filtration, fluorescent microscopy, mass spectrometry

Description: Clostridium difficile (bacteria causing infectious diarrhea) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA - a bacterium responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans) have been the main source of nosocomial infections (occurring in a hospital) in North America since 2003. There is currently no effective antibiotic against both C. difficile and MRSA. An extract (Curcuma amada Crude Extract; CACE) from mango ginger (Curcuma amada) was proven to have antimicrobial properties. In this research project, CACE was purified into four fractions using Sep-Pak filtration in order to identify antimicrobial compounds from mango ginger. These four fractions were tested for antimicrobial activity on two plant pathogenic bacteria, two human pathogenic bacteria, and two plant pathogenic fungi, and observed using fluorescent microscopy. These four fractions were analyzed using Mass Spectrometry to identify a novel antimicrobial compound.

Link: http://www.virtualsciencefair.org/2014/jaya14v

Short Background

Mango Ginger

Curcuma amada (mango ginger) is a plant of the ginger family Zingiberaceae and is closely related to turmeric. The rhizomes are very similar to ginger but have a raw mango taste. They are used in making pickles in south India. The taxonomy of the species is a subject of some confusion as some authorities have considered the name C. mangga as identical while others describe it as a distinct species with C. mangga being found in southern India while C. amada is of east Indian origin. Curcuma mangga extracts have shown cytotoxic activities on KB, A549, Ca Ski, HT-29 and MRC-5 cancer cell lines.

Amba Haldi (also known as Curcuma amada) is an ayurvedic medicine (a system of Hindu traditional medicine). Due to it's ability to not be inflammable, it can be used to treat inflammations.

Health benefits: anti-bacterial, heals parasite infections, heals bruises and strains, protects the body from pollution, partly protects various body parts from allergies.

Source: Wikipedia (All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)

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