Bioactivity of Polysaccharide from Gracilaria Verrucosa as α-Glucosidase Inhibitor

Seaweeds are known to be important source of secondary metabolites for pharmaceutical industry in drug development. Gracilaria genus are a potential source for alternative natural medicines. One kind of Gracilaria species is Gracilaria verrucosa. This species had been reported had potential as antioxidant, antihypertension and many others. In this paper we reported for the first time the bioacivity of methanol extract and crude polysaccharide from G. verrucosa as α-glucosidase inhibitor. Polysaccharide of G. verrucosa was extracted from cell wall by use of HCl pH 2 and washed in CaCl2 solution then identified by FTIR. The results showed that crude polysaccharide B from G. verrucosa was found to be the most active α-glucosidase inhibitor with IC50 of 3.51 ppm. Identification by FTIR found that both crude polysaccharide A and B were similar to the spectra of agaro-oligosaccharide.