ABSTRACT
Aspergillus parasiticus (A. parasiticus) is known for producing aflatoxins and is a major threat to the food industry. Green synthesis of nanoparticles (NPs) is a cost-effective and environment-friendly approach. A variety of NPs have been explored as antifungal agents; however, their antifungal characteristics need to be further enhanced to compete with traditional fungicides. The present work describes the green synthesis of ZnO and CuO NPs by precipitation method using aqueous leaf extract of Manilkara zapota and their surface modification through polyaniline (PANI). Still, there is no published study on the application of PANI-coated particles as antifungal agents against A. parasiticus and hence was the focus of this work. The polymer-coated NPs were synthesized, characterized, and investigated for their antifungal properties against A. parasiticus. Textural and structural characterization of PANI-coated and non-coated ZnO and CuO NPs were confirmed through FT-IR, SEM, and XRD techniques. The PANI-coated NPs presented higher fungal growth inhibition (%) as compared to the non-coated ones. The maximum inhibition of 77 ± 2% (n = 3) was shown by PANI/ZnO NPs at a concentration of 12 mmol L-1 and 72 h of incubation. The non-coated NPs presented a lower inhibition rate with respect to their coated NPs, thus justifying the role of polymeric coating in improving antifungal efficiency.
ABSTRACT
In the current study, a rapid and sensitive UPLC-MS method has been developed for the quantitative analysis of ampicillin in pure and pharmaceutical formulations. Forced degradation analysis was performed and the stress degradation product thus obtained was characterized by mass spectrometry. The chromatographic separation was carried out using BEH C18 column (100 × 2.1 mm, 1.7 µm particle size) using a binary mobile phase mixture of 0.001% acetic acid in water and methanol (30:70). The flow rate was set at 0.3 mL min(-1). The total chromatographic analysis time for ampicillin was as short as 1.5 min. The detection and quantitation of the studied drug was carried out using positive electrospray ionization and selected ion reaction modes. The developed method was found to be linear over the concentration range of 0.25-3.0 µg mL(-1). The recovery studies suggest an excellent recovery of the procedure which was found in the range of 99.45-100.90%. The relative standard deviation range of the developed analytical procedure ranged from 1.98 to 2.67% in intraday studies and 2.38-2.98% in case of interday study. The limit of detection and limit of quantitation of the method were found to be 0.016 and 0.049 µg mL(-1), respectively.