Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a synthetic antioxidant has been extensively used as a preservative in assorted products including food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, animal feeds etc. Despite being an exemplary preservative BHA has its own costs and benefits. High levels of BHA have been reported to cause severe damages at the cellular level in most fishes. On this certitude, the present study was designed to scrutinize the sublethal toxicity impacts of BHA at the molecular level in both the embryos as well as juvenile species of Zebrafish. The acute exposure studies were carried out by exposing the embryos and juveniles to a series of BHA concentration (1, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 µM) along with a control. After the acute exposure hatching rate was analyzed along with survival and deformities. The survived individuals were subjected to length analysis to understand the impacts on morphometric characters. The results revealed severe eye, spinal cord and yolk sac deformities in the embryos. 50 and 100 µM BHA revealed very low viability and increased heart rate (≈168bpm at 25µM).

Plant secondary metabolites play a crucial role in the therapeutic applications due to their non toxic nature. The present study was aimed to explore the antioxidant and antibacterial potential of a natural flavonoid Quercetin isolated from the plant Indigofera aspalathoides and Quercetin-Zinc (Qn-Zn) metal complex. The study results explored that, the both Quercetin and Qn-Zn metal complex displayed a strong free radicals quencher against the DPPH, ABTS and superoxide anion free radicals. In addition to that, it has also possessed antibacterial activity against the gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus Subtilis, Enterococcus faecalis) and gram negative (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) human pathogenic bacteria. Moreover, we found that and Qn-Zn metal complex displayed slightly better activity than the Quercetin. Overall, the present findings are demonstrated that, the biological activities of natural flavonoid Quercetin were increased, when it’s combined with Zinc metal complex.

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