The pyrimidine moiety is one of the most widespread heterocycles in biologically occurring compounds, such as nucleic acids components (uracil, thymine and cytosine) and vitamin B1. Due to its prebiotic nature to living cells in biodiversity, it is an highly privileged motif for the development of molecules of biological and pharmaceutical interest. This present work deals with the exploration of chemistry and medicinal diversity of pyrimidine which might pave way to long await discovery in therapeutic medicine for future drug design.
Banana is eaten all over the world by all sections of the population. A lectin, called BanLec, was isolated from banana fruit and found to possess anti-HIV-1 activity. However, the peels of banana are thrown away as rubbish although farmers are known to use them as feed for their animals. We thought that there might be some valuable chemicals in banana peels and therefore decided to extract the oils from their peels. Two varieties of Nigeria bananas were chosen for an initial study. The crude methanolic extract was subjected to phytochemical analysis, which revealed the presence of steroids, saponin, terpenoids, anthraquinones and tannins. Antimicrobial study of the methanolic extract showed that the oils were effective against some bacteria. The chemical constituents of the oils were identified and characterized by GC-MS. The fatty acids stearic, palmitic, oleic and linoleic acids and their methyl esters as well as 2,3-dihydro-3,5-dihydroxy-6-methyl-4H-pyran-4-one, 5-(hydroxymethyl)-2-furancarboxyaldehyde, cyclododecane, dibutyl phthalate, b-sitosterol, sesamin and epi-sesamin were among the identified components. These constituents were found to be compounds with known biological and medicinal activity.
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