GC-MS Analysis of Fatty Acid Esters in Fixed Oil, Isolated from Thymus linearis and Evaluation of their Antibacterial Activity

Objective of the study was to analyze the fixed oil obtained from Thymus linearis and evaluation of its anti bacterial activity. The fixed oil composition isolated from T. linearis n-hexane fraction has been analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) technique. The antibacterial activity of fixed oil was determined by agar well diffusion method against two Gram positive and six Gram negative bacterial strains. Ciprofloxacin was used as control in antibacterial study. Phytochemical investigations show that T. linearis contains medicinally important essential oils, alkaloids, resins, glycoside and triterpenoids. The total percentage of saturated fatty acids was found to be 64.7%. These were identified as myristic acid (3.0%), pentadecanoic acid (0.7%), palmitic acid (49.0%), margaric acid (1.0%), stearic acid (8.3%), behenic acid (0.3%), tricosanoic acid (0.3%) and tetracosanoic acid (2.1%). The unsaturated fatty acids were characterized as heptadecenoic acid (5.4%), oleic acid (9.2%), eicosanoic acid (2.6%), erucic acid (0.1%), linoleic acid (11.7%), octadecenoic acid (0.2%) and linolenic acid (6.0%), respectively. Fixed oil showed significant activity against K. pneumoniae, P. aeruginosa, Y. enterocolitis, S. paratyphi, S. typhi and C. freundii as compared to ciprofloxacin used as standard.