Metabolite Profiling and Bioactivity of Eastern Algerian <i>Posidonia oceanica</i>: Cholinesterase and Urease Inhibition with Low Cytotoxicity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Given the growing need for sustainable and natural alternatives to address global health and environmental challenges, marine plants have emerged as promising sources of bioactive compounds. In this context, the present study aimed to investigate the therapeutic potential of Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile through chemical profiling and enzymatic inhibitory evaluation. Samples (leaves and rhizomes) were collected from the eastern Algerian coast in 2023. Methanolic extracts were prepared and analyzed using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The inhibitory activity of the extracts was evaluated against three key enzymes: urease, acetylcholinesterase (AChE), and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), using Ellman’s colorimetric method for AChE and BChE, and the indophenol-based colorimetric method for urease. Cytotoxicity was assessed using the MTT colorimetric assay on Vero cells.LC-MS/MS analysis led to the identification of 23 secondary metabolites in the leaf extract and 22 compounds in the rhizome extract. The leaf extract exhibited an IC 50 of 15.78 ± 0.34 μg/mL against urease, and 113.43 ± 0.77/30.34 ± 0.56 μg/mL against AChE and BChE, respectively. The rhizome extract showed IC 50 values of 20.52 ± 0.75 μg/mL for urease and 33.59 ± 0.73/11.82 ± 0.73 μg/mL for AChE and BChE, respectively, demonstrating comparable or even superior activity to reference inhibitors such as thiourea and galantamine. Cytotoxicity results revealed moderate toxicity only at high concentrations, while the effective doses used in enzymatic assays were well below the toxicity threshold. Moreover, the selectivity index (SI) highlighted the promising potential of the rhizome extract against BChE (≈24.61) and of the leaf extract against urease (≈21.10), which strengthens their balance between efficacy and biological safety. Molecular docking studies further confirmed these results, showing strong binding interactions between phenolic compounds and the active sites of target enzymes. Notably, polydatin showed strong affinity for AChE (−7.765 kcal/mol), closely matching galantamine; rutin exhibited the highest binding energy with BChE (−9.533 kcal/mol); and vanillin demonstrated the best binding affinity for urease (−5.235 kcal/mol), surpassing thiourea. The phenolic compounds in P. oceanica exhibited promising multitarget inhibitory activity, particularly in the medical field for treating neurodegenerative diseases and urease-related infections. The observed moderate cytotoxicity indicates an acceptable safety margin, enhancing their value as a natural source for applications in medical, veterinary, agricultural, and environmental fields.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".