The plant Conyza canadensis, which belongs to Asteraceae (Compositae) family and known as Canadian horseweed. It was used as traditional medicine in China, Pakistan, India, and Africa for the treatment of various diseases causing by bacteria, fungi, or viruses. The plant has antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticoagulant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer pharmacological activity. This study provides the first phytochemical investigation of the plant in Iraq and is concerned with extraction, fractionation, isolation, and purification of some of the important phytochemicals detected in the plant-like phenolic acids, flavonoids, and alkaloids. Also, the literature survey has revealed that the plant has a substantial antimicrobial activity, so it was deemed desirable to make a study for the antimicrobial activity of the plant. The whole plant was collected from Baghdad city / College of Pharmacy/ University of Baghdad farm during July (2020). The aerial parts and roots were washed thoroughly, dried in shade, chopped, pulverized into a coarse powder, and then weighed. The shade-dried crushed plant materials were first defatted by maceration in hexane for 24 h. Then extracted by two extraction methods (hot method using soxhlet apparatus and cold method by maceration in solvent), using 85% aqueous ethanol as solvent extraction, and fractionated by petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and n-butanol. The phytochemical screening of the ethanolic extract from both extraction methods revealed alkaloids, saponin glycosides, coumarins, flavonoids, steroids, phenolic compounds, proteins, anthraquinones, terpenoids, and cardiac glycosides. However, depending on the percentage yields, the hot method yield was better than the cold method, so the extraction method by soxhlet was preferred upon maceration as it gives a higher percentage yield. The petroleum ether, chloroform, and ethyl acetate fractions were analyzed by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for their steroids, alkaloids, and polyphenolic (phenolic acids and flavonoids) contents, respectively. The different chromatographic results revealed the presence of stigmasterol and β- sitosterol in petroleum ether fraction, harmine alkaloid in chloroform fraction, quercetin, quercitrin, apigenin, p-coumaric acid, and caffeic acid in ethyl acetate fraction of the Iraqi C. canadensis plant. Three polyphenolics compounds (p-coumaric acid, caffeic acid, apigenin) were isolated from ethyl acetate fraction by preparative thin-layer chromatography plates (PLC), and Harmine alkaloid was isolated from chloroform fraction by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using a fraction collector. The isolated compounds were subjected to various chromatographic and spectral analytical techniques for their identification, such as TLC, FTIR, HPLC, and high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC). Petroleum ether fraction was analyzed for the detection of coumarins by TLC. One compound was isolated, purified by PLC, symbolized as MS compound, and identified by FTIR and 1H -NMR since there is no standard available for this compound. The isolated MS compound could be pyranocoumarin glycoside. To investigate the essential oil composition of Iraqi C. canadensis, hydrodistillation of fresh aerial part of the plant was done using Clevenger-type apparatus for 3hr. The essential oils components and the hexane fraction obtained by maceration of the plant material in hexane solvent were identified using GC/MS analysis. The results of GC/MS analysis of the essential oil were abundant by hydrocarbon compounds, particularly by sesquiterpene hydrocarbon. This study also involves a preliminary determination of the antimicrobial activity of ethyl acetate fraction of the plant against two Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis), two Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli and Klebsiella sp.) and one fungi species (Candida albicans) by measuring the inhibition zone diameter around the hole in mm, compared with streptomycin and fluconazole standard drugs for antibacterial and antifungal activity, respectively. The antimicrobial results showed significant antibacterial activity against S.aureus (gram-positive bacteria) and important antifungal activity against Candida albicans. In contrast, no antibacterial activity was demonstrated against the tested gram-negative bacteria. Furthermore, the antibacterial activity exerted against S. epidermidis (gram-positive bacteria) was affected by dilution dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO).
In present days, drug resistance is a major emerging problem in the healthcare sector. Novel antibiotics are in considerable need because present effective treatments have repeatedly failed. Antimicrobial peptides are the biologically active secondary metabolites produced by a variety of microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and algae, which possess surface activity reduction activity along with this they are having antimicrobial, antifungal, and antioxidant antibiofilm activity. Antimicrobial peptides include a wide variety of bioactive compounds such as Bacteriocins, glycolipids, lipopeptides, polysaccharide-protein complexes, phospholipids, fatty acids, and neutral lipids. Bioactive peptides derived from various natural sources like bacte
... Show MoreErbil city is located in the northern Iraq with a population of over one million people. Due to water crises farmers usually use wastewater and well water for the agricultural production. In this study six stations were designed to sample waste water and three from well water to define waste water and ground water characteristics. In this study, Residual Na+ Carbonate, Mg++ hazard, salinity hazard, Kelley index, %sodium, total hardness, permeability index, potential salinity, sodium adsorption ratio, and Irrigation Water Quality Index (IWQI) were determined. The order of average cation concentrations in water was Mg2+> Ca2+ > Na+ > K+. While the proportion of main
... Show MoreIn this paper, a new class of nonconvex sets and functions called strongly -convex sets and strongly -convex functions are introduced. This class is considered as a natural extension of strongly -convex sets and functions introduced in the literature. Some basic and differentiability properties related to strongly -convex functions are discussed. As an application to optimization problems, some optimality properties of constrained optimization problems are proved. In these optimization problems, either the objective function or the inequality constraints functions are strongly -convex.
Background Type two diabetes (T2DM) is characterized by insufficient insulin production and secretion. Additionally, the body develops insulin resistance which affects 90–95% of diabetics. Complex cytokines, receptors, genetic pathways, and the immune system are involved in T2DM. Interleukin-18 (IL-18) is one of the inflammatory cytokines associated with Type 2 diabetes. Environmental and genetic variables, including genetic polymorphisms, can increase T2DM risk and its consequences. Single nucleotide gene polymorphisms (SNPs) are important risk factors for diabetes that can be used to find the disease early and treat it better. Objective This study aimed to determine the levels of IL-18 in the serum of Iraqi patients with Type 2 diabetes
... Show MoreThe petrophysical analysis is very important to understand the factors controlling the reservoir quality and production wells. In the current study, the petrophysical evaluation was accomplished to hydrocarbon assessment based on well log data of four wells of Early Cretaceous carbonate reservoir Yamama Formation in Abu-Amood oil field in the southern part of Iraq. The available well logs such as sonic, density, neutron, gamma ray, SP, and resistivity logs for wells AAm-1, AAm-2, AAm-3, and AAm-5 were used to delineate the reservoir characteristics of the Yamama Formation. Lithologic and mineralogic studies were performed using porosity logs combination cross plots such as density vs. neutron cross plot and M-N mineralogy plot. Thes
... Show MoreBriefly the term of cyber security is a bunch of operations and procedures working on insurance and protecting the network, computer devices, the programs and data from attack and from damaging penetration, also from breaking, abstraction and disturbing in spite of the fact that the concept of cyber conflict is got widening. So, the needs arise in the state to secure cyberspace and protect it by several methods to confront the electronic intrusions and threats which is known as cyber security. Countries seek to preserve its national security in particular the United States of America after the events of September 11 ,2001. In addition, the United States follow all ways to take over cyber threats.
A single-crystalline semi-polar gallium nitride (11-22) was grown on m-plane (10-10) sapphire substrate by metal organic chemical vapor deposition. Three-step approach was introduced to investigate the grain size evolution for semi-polar (11-22) GaN. Such approach was achieved due to the optimized gallium to ammonia ratio and temperature variations, which led to high quality (11-22) oriented gallium nitride epilayers. The full width at half maximum values along (-1-123) and (1-100) planes for the overgrowth temperature of 1080°C were found to be as low as 0.37° and 0.49°, respectively. This was an indication of the enhanced coalescence and reduction in root mean square roughness as seen by atomic force microscopy. Surface analysi
... Show MoreAn annotated list based both on personal collections and on literature records, is presented for twenty species and subspecies of Chrysomelinae from Iraq. Eight of which are newly recorded, bringing the total number of species and subspecies for Iraq to 25. Localities and host data are given for most species.