Chapter 7
Antibacterial and Antifungal Plant
Metabolites from the Tropical Medicinal
Plants
Luiz Everson da Silva, Camila Confortin,
and Mallappa Kumara Swamy
Abstract A wide-ranging organism, such as plants, fungi, insects, marine organisms, and bacteria are the main sources of bioactive substances. Among them,
medicinal plants offer harmless elusive means to improve our health conditions.
Moreover, plant-derived bioactive is an inspiration for developing several therapeutic agents having extensively diverse chemo-structures and exhibit superior
biological properties like antimicrobial, anticancer, and antioxidant, antiinflammatory properties. Hence, many of them are used in therapeutic applications to treat various human ailments. Markedly, tropical countries harbor the
maximum global biodiversity and constitute several vital plant species with pharmacological potential. Hence, they are being explored for bioactive compounds,
and other raw materials to manufacture herbal medicines or chemo-drugs. In the
present time, the emergence of microbial resistance to conventional antibiotics has
become a major threat in treating microbial infections. Further, side effects caused
by classical antibiotics have forced scientists to work toward exploring novel
antimicrobial agents to overcome these hitches. Phytoconstituents have been shown
to have prospective antimicrobial properties against both sensitive and resistant
pathogenic microbes by exerting diverse mode of action. In this chapter, the
potential of tropical plant species with antibacterial and antifungal activities are
reviewed in detail.
Keywords Tropical medicinal flora Á Natural products Á Antifungal and
antibacterial activities Á Plant metabolites Á Phytotherapies
L. E. da Silva (&) Á C. Confortin
Post-Graduate Program in Sustainable Territorial Development,
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Matinhos 83260-000, Brazil
e-mail: luiever@gmail.com
M. K. Swamy
Department of Biotechnology, East West First College, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560091, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Pal and A. K. Nayak (eds.), Bioactive Natural Products
for Pharmaceutical Applications, Advanced Structured Materials 140,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54027-2_7
263
Antibacterial and Antifungal Plant
Metabolites from the Tropical Medicinal
Plants
Luiz Everson da Silva, Camila Confortin,
and Mallappa Kumara Swamy
Abstract A wide-ranging organism, such as plants, fungi, insects, marine organisms, and bacteria are the main sources of bioactive substances. Among them,
medicinal plants offer harmless elusive means to improve our health conditions.
Moreover, plant-derived bioactive is an inspiration for developing several therapeutic agents having extensively diverse chemo-structures and exhibit superior
biological properties like antimicrobial, anticancer, and antioxidant, antiinflammatory properties. Hence, many of them are used in therapeutic applications to treat various human ailments. Markedly, tropical countries harbor the
maximum global biodiversity and constitute several vital plant species with pharmacological potential. Hence, they are being explored for bioactive compounds,
and other raw materials to manufacture herbal medicines or chemo-drugs. In the
present time, the emergence of microbial resistance to conventional antibiotics has
become a major threat in treating microbial infections. Further, side effects caused
by classical antibiotics have forced scientists to work toward exploring novel
antimicrobial agents to overcome these hitches. Phytoconstituents have been shown
to have prospective antimicrobial properties against both sensitive and resistant
pathogenic microbes by exerting diverse mode of action. In this chapter, the
potential of tropical plant species with antibacterial and antifungal activities are
reviewed in detail.
Keywords Tropical medicinal flora Á Natural products Á Antifungal and
antibacterial activities Á Plant metabolites Á Phytotherapies
L. E. da Silva (&) Á C. Confortin
Post-Graduate Program in Sustainable Territorial Development,
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Matinhos 83260-000, Brazil
e-mail: luiever@gmail.com
M. K. Swamy
Department of Biotechnology, East West First College, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560091, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Pal and A. K. Nayak (eds.), Bioactive Natural Products
for Pharmaceutical Applications, Advanced Structured Materials 140,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54027-2_7
263