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Plants from genus Thymus are often used in traditional medicine. Some of these species are important medicinal plants that are used in ethnomedicine. In this work, analysis of phytochemicals and bioactivity evaluation of Thymus vulgaris and T. algericnsis essential oils were done. The chemical composition of oils were evaluated using GC/MS; cytotoxic activity was tested against five human tumor cell lines MCF-7 (breast adenocarcinoma), NCI-H460 (non-small cell lung cancer), HCT-15 (colon carcinoma), HeLa (cervical carcinoma), HepG2 (hepatocellular carcinoma) and non-tumor cell line PLP2 (porcine liver cell culture); DPPH scavenging activity, reducing power, P-carotene bleaching inhibition and TBARS inhibition were used to assessed the antioxidant potential of oils; antimicrobial activity, minimum inhibitory (MIC) and minimum bactericidal/fungicidal (MBC/MFC) concentrations, were determined using microdilution method. Eight bacterial species isolated from oral cavity were used: S. mutans, S. sanguis, S salivarius, S. pyogenes, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa, L acidophilus and E. feacalis and fifty eight clinical oral Candida spp. along with two reference strains were used. The dominant constituents of T vulgaris oil were: p-cymene ( 18.99%) and thymol (48.92%). The major component of T. algeriensis oil was: thymol (38.50%). Both essential oils inhibited the growth of human tumor cell lines tested. T. algeriensis showed greater potential (GI50 0.062±3.11 - 0.064± 1.51 mg/ml), compared to T. vulgaris (GI50 0.076±5.98 -0.18±2.68 mg/ml). None of the oils showed hepatotoxicity in the porcine liver primary cell culture (GI50 > 0.40 mg/ml). T. algeriensis oil showed stronger antioxidant activity in DPPH scavenging activity and reducing power measurements (EC50 1.64±0.05; 0.68±0.01 mg/ml) versus T. vulgaris (EC50 4.80±0.18; 1.54±0.04 mg/ml). However, T vulgaris oil showed stronger activity in P-carotene bleaching inhibition and TBARS inhibition methods (EC50 0.18±0.04; 0.05±0.00 mg/ml) compared to T algeriensis (EC50 1.56±0.12; 0.31±0.01 mg/ml). T. algeriensis showed higher antimicrobial activity towards the selected bacterial species (MIC 0.02-0.08; MBC 0.04-0.16 mg/ml) compared to T vulgaris (MIC 0.08-0.16; MBC 0.16-0.32 mg/ml). Fungi appeared to be more sensitive and again T. algerienesis oil showed higher activity (MIC 0.005-0.0 I 0; MFC 0 .010-0.020 mg/ml) than T vulgaris oil (MIC 0.04-0.08; MFC 0.08-0.16 mg/ml). The data of this study suggested that the both essential oils, especially T. algeriensis have great potential as natural agents for microbial infections. However, since essential oils are complex mixture of compounds, further study toward single components and their synergism and antagonism is needed. These investigations will be helpful for further utilization of the plant essential oils for their safe use in the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetics industries.

Mushrooms are widely appreciated for their nutraceutical value, since edible species are widely consumed all over the world. They have a long history of use for their health promotion benefits (Zaidman et al., 2005). Fungal species are considered to be a good source of many different compounds belonging to unsaturated fatty acids, phenolic compounds, tocopherols, proteins, and other bioactive metabolites (Barros et al. 2009). In recent years reports on the chemistry, and the nutritional and functional properties of mushroom have been overwhelming and more than 300 articles related to mushrooms have been published in the last two decades (Rathee et al., 2012).The golden age of antibiotic discovery is the 20th century and these potent drugs indisputably saved millions of lives. Nevertheless, we are entering an era when bacterial infections might no longer be successfully treated with commercially available antibiotics; overuse of antimicrobial drugs resulted in the emergence and spreading of multidrug and even pan-resistant pathogenic microorganisms (Carlet et al., 2011), so the search for new antimicrobial agents must be continued. Antimicrobial potential of mushrooms is still poorly investigated and available literature (Ofodile et al., 201 1; Bala et al., 201 1) indicates that further chemical analyzes of mushrooms is required to support studies searching for mushroom derived antimicrobial agents. Desert truffles, though less appreciated in cuisine than the European forest ones, are nonetheless true truffles in the sense that they are hypogeous (underground) ascomycete fungi, as opposed to hypogeous basidiomycete fungi, termed false truffles. The best known and appreciated genera Terfezia and Tirmania were shown to belong to the Pezizaceae rather than to the distinctly hypogeous Terfeziaceae family, which has been abolished (Norman and Egger, 1999). The main goals of our study were to investigate nutraceutical value, sugars and fatty acids composition of Tirmania pinoyi, as well as to determine antibacterial properties of its methanol extract dissolved in three different solvent systems.