Bangladesh Journal of Pharmacology Volume: 16; Number 3; Year 2021 Cite this article as: Shankar S, Sathiavelu M. Antibacterial activity of Dracaena lisa. Bangladesh J Pharmacol. 2021; 16: 84-86. Antibacterial activity of Dracaena lisa Sir, Dracaena is a genus of about 120 species that belongs to the family Asparagaceae and subfamily Nolinoideae. At moderate temperature, humidity and moisture conditions the leaf of Dracaena remains more attractive and colorful at a huge duration of time (Shankar et al., 2018). The plant Dracaena draco stem contains red resin called Dragon’s blood that was used as traditional medicine. An effective saponin compound known as spirocanozole-A was extracted from the plant D. arborea and D. mannini showed various pharmacological activities such as molluscicidal, fungicidal, bacterio- static, antileishmanial and antimalarial activities (Aslam et al., 2013). Some of the species of this genus, D. victoria (Sundar et al., 2019), D. cinnabari (Altwair and Edrah, 2015) and D. mahatma (Shankar et al., 2018) exhibited significant antibacterial activity. Based on these literature reviews, the plant D. lisa was chosen to evaluate the phytochemical screening and in vitro antibacterial activity against bacterial pathogens using the agar well diffusion method. Fresh leaves of the plant D. lisa were collected from the VIT, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. The leaves were washed with double distilled water to remove dust particles and shade dried for 3-4 days. After drying, the leaves were ground into a fine powder using an electric blender. Based on polarity the solvents such as methanol, ethyl acetate and dichloromethane were used for leaf extracts preparation. The leaf powder of about 1 g was dissolved in 100 mL of different solvents in 250 mL of Erlenmeyer flask. Then the flask was sealed with parafilm and placed in a shaker for 48 hours at 120 rpm. After 48 hours the content was filtered using a Whatman filter paper No. 1 and evaporated by using a rotary vacuum evaporator. The crude extract becomes concentrated and further studies have been carried out using these extracts. Phytochemical assessment was done for D. lisa leaf using standard qualitative methods (Papitha et al., 2017). Agar well diffusion method was carried out to determine the antibacterial activity of leaf crude extracts. The stock culture was prepared using nutrient broth and inoculated with different bacteria’s such as Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas fluorescence, Bacillus subtilis, Klebsiella pneumonia, Enterococcus fecalis and Escherichia coli then it was incubated at 37ºC for 24 hours. Further, the bacterial culture was streaked over the surface of the freshly prepared Muller-Hinton agar plate. Using cork borer the wells were made on the plates and filled with 100 μL of leaf extract at different concentrations (25, 50 and 100 µg/mL). Ciprofloxacin disc was used as positive control and these plates were kept for incubation at 37ºC for 24 hours. After the incubation period, the zone of inhibition was measured (Goyal et al., 2008) Qualitative phytochemical analysis of leaf extracts of D. lisa indicates the presence of phenol, tannins and flavonoids. Whereas D. mahatma revealed the presence of tannins, phenols, alkaloids, sterols, triterpenes and anthraquinone glycosides (Shankar et al., 2018). Antibacterial activity was performed for three different leaf extracts of the plant D. lisa. The result revealed that all three extracts showed significant antibacterial A Journal of the Bangladesh Pharmacological Society (BDPS) Bangladesh J Pharmacol 2021; 16: 84-86 Journal homepage: www.banglajol.info; www.bdpsjournal.org Abstracted/indexed in Academic Search Complete, Agroforestry Abstracts, Asia Journals Online, Bangladesh Journals Online, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, CAB Abstracts, Current Abstracts, Directory of Open Access Journals, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Global Health, Google Scholar, HINARI (WHO), International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Open J-gate, Science Citation Index Expanded, SCOPUS and Social Sciences Citation Index ISSN: 1991-0088; DOI: 10.3329/bjp.v16i3.53018 Letter to the Editor This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, distribute and perform the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor Figure 1: Antibacterial activity of the plant Dracaena lisa against test strain (Bacillus subtilis). Ethyl acetate extract (A), dichloro- methane extract (B), and methanol extract (C) A B C activity against Gram positive bacteria such as S. aureus, B. subtilis and E. fecalis and also Gram negative bacteria like K. pneumonia, P. fluorescence and E. coli. Among all test organisms, B. subtilis exhibited maximum zone of inhibition in all leaf extracts as shown in Figure 1. In ethyl acetate leaf extract the highest zone of inhibition was observed in B. subtilis with 28 mm at 100 µg/mL followed by E. coli of about 25 mm inhibition at 100 µg/ mL as tabulated in Table I. P. fluorescence did not show any zone of inhibition. In dichloromethane leaf extract, B. subtilis showed strong antibacterial activity of about 24 mm zone of inhibition at 100 µg/mL followed by K. pneumonia with 15 mm inhibition at 100 µg/mL. In methanol leaf extract, B. subtilis exhibited good antibacterial activity of about 16 mm at 100 µg/mL. E. fecalis did not show any zone of inhibition for this extract. This is the first report on the antibacterial activity of D. lisa. The ethyl acetate leaf extract of the plant D. colorama exhibited strong antibacterial activity against P. aeruginosa of about 16 mm at 100 µg/mL (Sundar et al., 2020). The plant D. mahatma methanolic leaf extract showed significant antibacterial activity against various pathogens such as S. aureus, Proteus mirabilis, B. cereus and K. pneumoniae respectively. The methanolic extract of D. afromontana leaves exhibited prominent antibacterial activity against E. with 1.6 cm zone of inhibition at 0.1 mg/mL (Jean et al., 2020). The ethyl acetate extract of the stem of D. manni showed maximum inhibition of about 24 mm against E. coli at 200 mg/mL. whereas, in methanolic stem extract, S. aureus exhibited good antibacterial activity of about 20 mm at 200 mg/mL (Ameen et al., 2015). The ethyl acetate and aqueous extract of the plant D. cinnabari had significant antibacterial activity against different pathogenic microorganisms that includes E. coli, P. vulgaris, P. aeruginosa, K. pneumonia and S. saprophyticus (Altwair and Edrah, 2015). In conclusion, the present study justifies that the D. lisa leaf extracts possess significant antibacterial activity against tested organisms. The authors thank Vellore Institute of Technology for providing lab facilities to carry out this research work. Saranya Shankar and Mythili Sathiavelu Department of Biotechnology, School of Biosciences and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India. Corresponding author: email: smythili@vit.ac.in References Altwair K, Edrah S. Phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activity for plants Dracaena cinnabari, Verbena officinal, Polygala tenuifolia and Linux usitatissimum. J Curr Chem Pharm Sci. 2015; 5: 47-55. Ameen OM, Olatunji GA, Usman LA, Adebayo MA, Zubair MF, Opabola TO, Agboola DO. The phytochemical screen- ing and toxicity of the stem extracts of Dracaena manni (BAKER). Int J Chem Sci. 2015; 7: 17-25. Aslam J, Mujib A, Sharma MP. In vitro micropropagation of Dracaena sanderiana Sander ex Mast: An important indoor ornamental plant. Saudi J Biol Sci. 2013; 20: 63-68. Goyal P, Khanna A, Chauhan A, Chauhan G, Kaushik P. In vitro evaluation of crude extracts of Catharanthus roseus for potential antibacterial activity. Int J Green Pharm, 2008; 2: 176-181. Jean N, Gratien H, Janvier H, Adrien R, Bernard NJ. Phytochemical screening and in vitro antimicrobial activity of Dracaena afromontana leaves. 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