Determination of chemical composition and antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities of lichens Parmelia conspersa and Parmelia perlata

Abstract

© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. The aim of this study is to investigate the chemical composition of extracts of the lichens Parmelia conspersa and Parmelia perlata and their antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anticancer activities. The phytochemical analysis of the acetone extracts of two Parmelia lichens was determined by (HPLC-UV) method. The predominant phenolic compounds in these extracts were norstictic acid and usnic acids in P. conspersa, while salazinic acid and stictic acid were the major metabolites detected in P. perlata. Besides these compounds, the tested extracts of these lichens contain atranorin and chloroatranorin. The lichen extracts showed comparable and strong antioxidant activity, exhibited higher DPPH and hydroxyl radical scavengings, chelating activity, and inhibitory activity towards lipid peroxidation. The lichen extracts demonstrated important antimicrobial activity against eight strains with MIC values from 19.53 to 312.5 µg/mL. Cytotoxic effects of lichens were tested against Hep2c, RD and L2OB cell lines using MTT method. Cytotoxic effects of P. conspersa and P. perlata extracts toward three cancer cell lines were in the range from 76.33 to 163.39 µg/mL. This is the first report of the detail chemical composition of the lichens P. conspersa and P. perlata. The present study showed that tested extracts of lichens demonstrated a important antimicrobial, antioxidant and anticancer effects. That suggests that these lichens can be used as new sources of the natural antimicrobial agents, antioxidants and anticancer compounds.