The emergence of multi-drug resistant strain of Escherichia coli (E.coli) has necessitated the exploration and development of newer structural moiety of Schiff bases as anti- E. coli agents owing to their enormous inhibitory activity against this bacterium. In this present study, a Genetic function approximation (GFA) QSAR analysis of some selected Schiff bases with anti- E. coli activity was performed using OD,1D, 2D and 3D descriptors resulting in the generation of three statistically significant models from which an octa-parametric model was selected as the most robust model with R2 = 0.9622, R2adj = 0.9470, Q2 = 0.9132, R2 - Q2 = 0.049, R2 – R02 / R2 =0.00, R2 – R‘ 02 / R2 = 0.001, K = 1, K’ = 0.9622. The optimization model hinted the predominance of the size descriptor ETA-Eta-P-F-L (Local functionality contribution EtaF_local relative to molecular size) in influencing the observed anti-E. coli activity of Schiff bases. It is envisaged that the QSAR results identified in this study will offer important structural insight into designing novel anti-E. coli drugs from Schiff bases.
