Antibacterial and cytotoxic activity of the bark of Phoenix paludosa in different solvents

Plant origin is an important source of drugs. in this experiment,the ethanolic extract of the bark of phoenix paludosa fractioned with three different solvents (petroleum ether,chloroform and ethyl acetate),was investigated to evaluate the antibacterial and cytotoxic activity. most popular disc diffusion method was applied to determine the antibacterial activity of 500 μg/disc crude extract of the plant against 12 pathogenic gram positive and gram negative bacteria. cytotoxic test was performed by following the brine shrimp lethality bioassay at different concentrations (100,50,25,12.5,6.25 μg/ml) where vincristine sulphate served as positive control. though the antibacterial activity is not so promising compared to the standard kanamycin,only the chloroform fraction of ethanolic extract exhibited activity against all experimental bacteria (zone of inhibition ranging from 7 to 15 mm),the plant has been proven to possess good cytotoxic activity,having lc50 value of 13.03,9.24 and 7.47 μg/ml for petroleum ether,chloroform and ethyl acetate fraction of ethanolic extract of the bark of phoenix paludosa,respectively. © 2017 jordan journal of biological sciences.