One-pot green synthesis of gold nanoparticles using Sarcophyton crassocaule, a marine soft coral: Assessing biological potentialities of antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-diabetic and catalytic degradation of toxic organic pollutants

Samson Rokkarukala; Tijo Cherian; Chinnasamy Ragavendran; Raju Mohanraju; Chinnaperumal Kamaraj; Yosif Almoshari; Ahmed Albariqi; Muhammad H Sultan; Abdullah Alsalhi; Syam Mohan

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14668

One-pot green synthesis of gold nanoparticles using Sarcophyton crassocaule, a marine soft coral: Assessing biological potentialities of antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-diabetic and catalytic degradation of toxic organic pollutants

Heliyon. 2023 Mar 21;9(3):e14668. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14668. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ocean Studies and Marine Biology, Pondicherry University, Port Blair campus, Brookshabad, Port Blair, Andamans- 744112.
² Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), Chennai, India.
³ Interdisciplinary Institute of Indian System of Medicine (IIISM), Drug Testing Laboratory, Directorate of Research, SRM Institute Science and Technology, Kattankulathur - 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁴ Department of pharmaceutics, College of pharmacy, Jazan University,P.O. Box 114, Jazan 45142, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Substance Abuse and Toxicology Research Centre, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ School of Health Sciences, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
⁷ Center for Transdisciplinary Research, Department of Pharmacology, Saveetha Dental College, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical science, Saveetha University, Chennai, India.

Abstract

Marine bio-resources are being extensively researched as a priceless supply of substances with therapeutic potential. This work report the first time attempt made towards the green synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) using the aqueous extract of marine soft coral (SCE), Sarcophyton crassocaule. The synthesis was conducted under optimized conditions and the visual coloration of reaction mixture changed from yellowish to ruby red at 540 nm. The electron microscopic (TEM, SEM) studies exhibited spherical and oval shaped SCE-AuNPs in the size ranges of 5-50 nm. The organic compounds present in SCE were primarily responsible for the biological reduction of gold ions validated by FT-IR while the zeta potential confirmed the overall stability of SCE-AuNPs. The synthesized SCE-AuNPs exhibited variety of biological efficacies like antibacterial, antioxidant and anti-diabetic in nature. The biosynthesized SCE-AuNPs demonstrated remarkable bactericidal efficacy against clinically significant bacterial pathogens with inhibition zones of mm. Additionally, SCE-AuNPs exhibited greater antioxidant capacity in terms of DPPH: 85 ± 0.32% and RP: 82 ± 0.41%). The ability of enzyme inhibition assays to inhibit α-amylase (68 ± 0.21%) and α-glucosidase (79 ± 0.2%) was quite high. The study also highlighted the spectroscopic analysis of the biosynthesized SCE-AuNPs' catalytic effectiveness of 91% in the reduction processes of the perilous organic dyes, exhibiting pseudo-first order kinetics.

Keywords: Antibacterial; Antidiabetic; Antioxidant; Catalytic activity; Gold nanoparticles; Organic pollutants; Sarcophyton crassocaule; Soft coral.