The rapid emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics currently available for treating infectious diseases requires effective antimicrobial agents with new structural profiles and mechanisms of action. Twenty-three thiazolin-4-one derivatives were evaluated for their antibacterial activity by determining the growth inhibition zone diameter, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC), against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Compounds 3a-c, 3e-h, 6b-c and 9a-c expressed better MIC values than moxifloxacin, against Staphylococcus aureus. Compounds 3h and 9b displayed similar effect to indolmycin, a tryptophanyl-tRNA ligase inhibitor. Due to their structural analogy to indolmycin, all compounds were subjected to molecular docking on tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase. Compounds 3a-e, 6a-e, 8 and 9a-e exhibited better binding affinities towards the target enzymes than indolmycin. The antioxidant potential of the compounds was evaluated by four spectrophotometric methods. Thiazolin-4-ones 3e, 6e and 9e presented better antiradical activity than ascorbic acid, trolox and BHT, used as references.
Keywords: Thiazolin-4-one; antibacterial activity; antioxidant activity; docking; tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase.