Studies Toward Isolation and Identification of Bioactive Substances from Medicinal Plants

More than 600 plant species have been used in the Palestinian traditional medicine to treat various diseases.About fifty of these plants are used to treat various skin diseases.This work is a continuation of existing effort to find new medicine from plants grows in Palestine.Medicinal plant Tayoon was chosen for this work. It was chosen because it is an important plant in the Palestinian folklore, it has unlimited number of medical applications. Three main stages were used in separation and identification of tayoon extracts. In the first stage, tayoon was subjected to extraction with ethyl acetate. In the second stage, tayoon extracts were fractionated using flash chromatography, four fractions were separated. In the third stage, the four separated fractions were evaluated for antibacterial activities.Results of the antibacterial study showed that only fraction 4 has activity against bacteriaS.aureus.Base on these results fraction 4 was further fractionated by flash chromatography and two components were collected. The major component which was identified to have the bioactivity was analyzed by various spectroscopic techniques and its structure was determined.The major compound of fraction four was identified to be 5,7-dihydroxy-2-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-3-methoxy-4H-chromen-4-onewhich is known as 3,3’-di-O-methylquercetin.