Anti-Microbial Activity and Spectro-Chemical Investigation of Ink Extracts of <i> Sepiella inermis</i> (Van Hasselt 1835)

The crude petroleum ether and methanol ink extracts of Sepiella inermis were tested for their antimicrobial activity against human pathogenic fungi and bacteria by disc diffusion method. Spectral analysis was carried out by UV-VIS spectrophotometer, FT-IR, Raman IR and GC-MS. Of the two solvent extracts, only methanol extract was active and no activity was detected in petroleum ether extract. The human pathogenic fungus Candida albicans and bacterium Proteus vulgaris were found to be highly sensitive, with an inhibition zone of 20 and 19 mm respectively. GC-MS of methanol ink extract revealed sixteen compounds belonging to the derivatives of dihydroxy indole-2-carboxylic acid and dihydroxyindole. These investigations proved that methanol ink extract of Sepiella inermis possess significant antimicrobial property against both fungus and gram –ve bacteria. Since ink of sepia is available abundantly as a waste material, studies focused on isolation and characterization of bioactive substances pave the way for new antimicrobial compounds

Molecular Identification and Phylogenetic Relationships of Threadfin Breams (Family: Nemipteridae) Using mtDNA Marker

Cytochrome c oxidase-1 gene sequences of mitochondrial genome were analyzed for species identification and phylogenetic relationship among the commercially important Nemipterus species. Sequence analysis of COI gene clearly indicated that all the nine fish species fell into distinct clads, which are genetically distant from each other and exhibited identical phylogenetic reservation. All the COI gene sequences provide sufficient phylogenetic information and evolutionary relationship to distinguish the nine Nemipterus species unambiguously. As per the neighbour-joining (NJ) and maximum likelihood (ML) trees, all the nine species are genetically distant from each other and exhibited identical phylogenetic reservation. Based on the NJ and ML phylogenetic trees N. mesoprion, N. zysron, N. hexodon, N. nematophorus, N. virgatus and N. bipunctatus were closely related with high bootstrap value (97). The overall mean Kimura two parameter (K2P) distances between the nine species was 0.109. The intra species K2P distance was high in N. japonicus (0.069) followed by N. peronii (0.050) and N. mesoprion (0.002). This study proves the use of mtDNA COI gene sequence based approach is an alternative tool for identifying fish species at a faster pace