Antimicrobial evaluation and action mechanism of pyridinium-decorated 1,4-pentadien-3-one derivatives.

A type of pyridinium-decorated 1,4-pentadien-3-one derivatives possessing flexible alkyls were designed and synthesized by integrating the key scaffolds of pyridinium cations and 1,4-pentadien-3-one skeleton in a single molecular architecture. Antimicrobial bioassays indicated that some of the target molecules exerted considerable bioactivities against six phytopathogenic strains, especially for Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae, the minimal EC50 value can reach to 0.504 µg/mL. A plausible action mechanism for this kind of compounds was proposed and confirmed by employing fluorescent spectroscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. We anticipated that this finding can promote high-efficient lead compounds discovery in the research of antimicrobial chemotherapy.