Background: This study was carried out to investigate the antifungal activity of chitinase produced by Streptomyces species isolated from grassland soils against selected pathogenic fungi, namely: Magnaporthe oryzae, Fusarium graminearum, Rhizoctonia solani, Puccinia species and Botyrtis cinerea. Chitinase produced by Streptomyces albus was purified consecutively with dialysis, gel filtration and ion- exchange chromatography, the test isolate can be exploited for large scale production of chitinase. Results: Seven Streptomyces species (Streptomyces rimosus, S. albus, S. riseoflavus, S. fumosus, S. spiralis, S. aureofaciens and S. flavogriseus) isolated from three different grassland soils were screened based on the morphology and their ability to produce chitinase. S. rimosus, S. fumosus, S. albus and S. flavogriseus were able to produce chitinase, although the enzyme chitinase was found to be higher in Streptomyces albus. The effect of environmental factors were determined on Streptomyces albus being the best chitinolytic producing isolate. Temperature of 30^οC was favourable for Streptomyces albus and pH 6.0 was a growth factor for maximum chitinase production. The activity of the enzyme was stimulated by the addition of metal ions like Mn²⁺, K⁺, Na⁺, Mg⁺, Fe²⁺, Ca²⁺ but Zn²⁺ inhibited chitinase activity. Chitinase activity was favoured by maltose as carbon source and NH₄ (SO₄)₂ as nitrogen source. Culture filtrate of Streptomyces albus was able to inhibit the growth of all the selected pathogenic fungi namely Magnaporthe oryzae, Fusarium graminearum, Rhizoctonia solani, Puccinia species and Botyrtis cinerea whereas Streptomyces rimosus has the least inhibitory activity. Conclusions: Streptomyces albus has the highest ability to produce chitinase which can act as antifungal for degradation of the cell wall of many phytopathogenic fungi.

Background: This study focused on the evaluation of the bioactive compounds of Vernonia amygdalina Del. leaf extracts and their antibacterial potential on some water-related bacterial isolates. The bacterial isolates were confirmed using standard microbiological test. The leaves of V. amygdalina were subjected to extraction using the Maceration method with water and ethanol as the extraction solvents. Gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC–MS) was carried out on extracts. Antibacterial susceptibility test of V. amygdalina extracts on isolates was carried out. Results: Aqueous extract of V. amygdalina had a higher percentage yield (11.89%) than the ethanol extract (5.37%). The GC–MS carried out revealed the presence of butanoic acid, squalene, palmitaldehyde, octadecanoic acid, Z-hexadecanoic acid ethyl ester, oxirane, tetradecyl, 3- methyl-2-phenylindole, n-heneicosane, phytol, methyl-2-O-benzyl-d-arabinofuranoside, cholest-5-en-3-ol acetate; with hexadecanoic acid ethyl ester and 1,1-diethoxy-3methylbutane having the highest percentage composition of 24.37% and 13.42% in aqueous and ethanol extract, respectively, aqueous extract highly inhibited Escherichia coli with an inhibition zone of 10.333 ± 0.882 and 36.667 ± 0.882 for 25 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml, respectively, while the ethanol extracts inhibited most of the isolates with an inhibition range of 7.000 ± 1.155 to 30.333 ± 0.882. The minimum inhibitory concentration for both extracts on the isolates varies from 25 to 50 mg/ml. Conclusions: The ethanol extract of V. amygdalina had a higher inhibitory activity on the bacterial isolates than water. These findings indicate the potential of ethanol extract of V. amygdalina leaf in the treatment of water borne infections.

The accelerating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis continues to render more and more conventional antibiotics ineffective. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are promising alternatives to traditional antibiotics due to their broad-spectrum activity, diverse mechanisms of action, and lower propensity for resistance. Traditional discovery approaches face limitations arising from the vast sequence space and the challenge of balancing efficacy with low toxicity. Addressing these challenges is critical for developing next-generation antimicrobial agents, and computational methods are increasingly driving progress. Public repositories, and techniques such as molecular docking enable in silico evaluation of peptide target interactions, identifying candidates with strong binding potential. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations offer deeper insights into how AMPs disrupt membranes, form pores, or act synergistically, while Steered MD extends this to probing membrane penetration. Artificial intelligence (AI) methods, including machine learning and deep learning, capture complex sequence activity relationships, predict novel AMPs from genomic and metagenomic data, and design new peptides de novo using generative models. Despite rapid advances, most existing reviews treat these approaches in isolation, leaving a fragmented understanding of their interplay. This paper addresses that gap by unifying computational strategies, highlighting synergies, and critiquing limitations. Ultimately, integrating these methodologies offers a path toward more efficient AMP discovery to fight AMR.

Uterine fibroids (UF) are reproductive conditions that occur as tumours in the womb. It is a gynecological outgrowth of diverse sizes often allied with infertility risks that might require surgery to reduce the complication in the worst-case scenario in women. Recent studies have uncovered that estrogen can induce and facilitate other target pathways' action on target cells for UF's pathogenesis, among the targets probed for pharmaceutical intervention. This study screens the interaction effects of 32 phytochemicals from indigenous and adopted potent Chinese plants and herbs; Chamomile, Pomegranate, Red clover, Cinnamomum, and Date palm, against estrogen receptor alpha (ESRα) to serve for anti-UF drug candidates using in silico tools through the molecular mechanisms. The interaction identifies coumestrol as the best-docked candidate (-9.6 kcal/mol) with a correlation to the binding free energy (-30.487 kcal/mol) as compared to the standard drug tamoxifen (-9.3 kcal/mol; -46.928 kcal/mol). The downstream post-docking evaluation reveals coumestrol to have excellent pharmacokinetics, drug-likeness, leadlikeness (no violation), less toxic (LD50; 2991 mg/kg), and highly interactive with ESRα. Coumestrol was top-ranked for ESRα (1QKU) target by PharmMapper among 300 human protein targets, with a z-score of 1.19368. The density functional theory (DFT) and dynamic simulation of 200 ns reveal regions of coumestrol structure and its complex that contribute to the chemical reactivity, stability, flexibility, and compactness of druggability. Ultimately, coumestrol emerged as a potential candidate suitable for anti-UF management, therefore future direction for its application should be on the design and synthesis of new structural derivatives for further in silico, in vitro, and in vivo studies.

Background: Food hygiene and safety is of utmost importance for public health, as it helps to protect the health of consumers from foodborne illnesses. Although, hundreds of plant species have been screened and tested for antimicrobial properties, the vast majority of these plants have not been adequately screened and evaluated. Considering the vast potentiality of plants as sources for antimicrobial drugs, the present research aimed to evaluate antioxidant, phytochemicals and determine the antibacterial activity ofM. charantia(Linn)onpathogenic organism from Ready-to-eat food sold in Akure metropolis.Results: Bacteria isolated from RTE food studied belong to the following genera;Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Citrobacter, Pectobacterium, Klebsiella, Bacillus, Kocuria, Kluyveria, Serratia, Pantoea, Enterobacter and Salmonella. The antibiotic susceptibility pattern revealed that the Gram negative organisms were more susceptible to Gentamycin (30 µg) while Streptomycin (30 µg) was found to be more potent on Gram positive organisms. Water and ethanol extracts showed significant to moderate antibacterial activity toward all tested isolates except;Escherichia vulnerisandKluyveria intermediawhich are both resistant to the aqueous extracts ofM. charantiaand the latter which was resistant to the ethanoic extract. The highest inhibitory activity was observed forBacillus cereuswith zone of inhibition of diameters 28 ± 0.29^l(mm), followed byEscherichia vulneris25 ± 0.29^l(mm). DDPH% Inhibition has higher value in the water extract (69.21 ± 0.882^a) while lower value was recorded in the ethanol extract (67.89 ± 0.155^b). % Iron chelation has higher value in the ethanol extract (121.87 ± 0.882^a) while lower value was recorded in the water extract (97.28 ± 0.155^b). In all the concentration, vitamin C was higher in the ethanol extract than in the water extract.Conclusions: The study revealed that all the Ready-to-eat food had a total bacterial count that are below potentially hazardous count although the presence of some microorganisms that are of health significance were observed. The study also confirmed thatM. charantia(Linn) extracts had antibacterial effect against tested isolates from Ready-to-eat food sold in Akure metropolis. Based on the findings of this great research work,Mormordica charantia(Linn) possesses antioxidant activity that could prevent oxidative stress and degenerative diseases.