INTRODUCTION
Marine ecosystem offers a huge potential in the naturally based pharmacopoeia of this century. Natural products continue to be a major source of pharmaceuticals and for the discovery of new molecular structures. Many organisms from these environments have been found to produce antibiotic compounds. Marine invertebrates rely solely on innate immune mechanisms for host defense is a spectacular resource for the development of new bioactive compounds, and have been recognized to offer a source of potential antimicrobial drugs.[1,2,3&4]
Cephalopods are considerably important as a food resource as well as in scientific investigations. There is an ever continuous and urgent need to discover new antimicrobial compounds with diverse chemical structures, novel mechanisms of action due to the alarming increase in the incidence of both new and emerging infectious diseases and the permanent resistance of microorganisms to available drugs. This increase in resistance is a global problem, no country is immune to this condition and all major bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to at least one or more drugs.[5]
As resistance is increased, patients are on high risk of severity because of untreated pathogens. We are still in great need of safer, cheaper and effective drugs. Due to the development of drug resistance as well as the appearance of undesirable side effects of certain antibiotic has led to the search of new antimicrobial agents. In our continuous search of antimicrobial agents from natural sources, this study has been designed to assess the antimicrobial activity of crude and partially purified ink extract of squid and cuttlefish