Phytochemical profiling of ethanolic extract of bee pollen using Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy and its in silico analysis of hypocholeterolemic activity

Abstract

Bee pollen, a bee product, is considered as one of the valuable products in natural medicine, for its excellent therapeutic properties. Cold maceration technique was employed to extract bee pollen and the phytochemical constituents were analysed. The preliminary phytochemical analysis showed the presence of acids, proteins, carbohydrates, phenol, flavonoids, glycosides, anthraquinone, quinone, resins, saponin, tannin, and terpenoids. The advanced phytochemical screening of volatile chemical constituents analyzed using Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) showed 40 volatile chemical compounds from the bee pollen extract. Among those, the hypocholesterolemic effect-related compound of bee pollen was analyzed by in silico docking method, where Oxidosqualene:Ianosterolcyclase (OSC) was taken as a target enzyme which helps in cholesterol biosynthesis. Hexadecanoic acid, Pentadecanoic acid, Pyrroloindole, and Alpha amyrin selected as ligands, and Ro 48-8071 fumarate used as a standard enzyme inhibitor for molecular docking analysis, showed that all the ligands efficiently bound with the target enzyme OSC. Among the four compounds, alpha amyrin had the highest binding interaction energy with the target enzyme (-13.37 kJ mole^-1). The OSC enzyme inhibition activity may be responsible for the hypocholesterolemic effect and weight-reducing property of bee pollen.