Synthesis, characterization of dialkylated erythrosin B derivatives and their utility as a propitious anti-microbial agent

The development of small molecule based drugs as an antimicrobial agent is an important area of research nowadays. In the present work, two new molecular entities based on dialkylated erythrosin B has been synthesized via Arbuzov type of rearrangement using dialkyl sulphite as a reagent in the presence of Et3N. Ethyl and methyl based dialkylated derivatives of erythrosin B were characterized using 1H NMR, 13C NMR and HRMS data. Keeping in mind the biological safety of erythrosin B, synthesized derivatives were checked for their antimicrobial activity against the microbial strains Escherichia coli (E.coli). The two were found to be effective against the E. coli with the antimicrobial activity similar to that of Ampicillin. Further, the trend of antimicrobial activity has been supported by DFT data analysis and it was observed that compound, B with low HOMO (–5.93 eV) and LUMO (–3.11 eV) energies is a better antimicrobial agent than compound A.