Authentication of Zingiber Species Based on Analysis of Metabolite Profiles

Abstract

Zingiber corallinum and Zingiber montanum, which belong to the Zingiberaceae family, are traditional Chinese folk medicinal herbs in Guizhou and Yunnan Province of China. They share great similarities in morphology, chemical constituent, and DNA barcoding sequence. The taxonomy of the two Zingiber species is controversial and discrimination of traditional Chinese medicines directly affects the pharmacological and clinical effects. In the present study, we performed a systemic analysis of “super-barcode” and untargeted metabolomics between Z. corallinum and Z. montanum using chloroplast (cp) genome sequencing and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. Comparison and phylogenetic analysis of cp genomes of the two Zingiber species showed that the cp genome could not guarantee the accuracy of identification. An untargeted metabolomics strategy combining GC-MS with chemometric methods was proposed to distinguish the Zingiber samples of known variety. A total of 51 volatile compounds extracted from Z. corallinum and Z. montanum were identified, and nine compounds were selected as candidate metabolic markers to reveal the significant difference between Z. corallinum and Z. montanum. The performance of the untargeted metabolomic approach was verified with unknown Zingiber samples. Although the cp genomes could not be used to identify Zingiber species in this study, it will still provide a valuable genomics resource for population studies in the Zingiberaceae family, and the GC-MS based metabolic fingerprint is more promising for species identification and safe application of Z. corallinum and Z. montanum.

A novel biological sources consistency evaluation method reveals high level of biodiversity within wild natural medicine: A case study of Amynthas earthworms as “Guang Dilong”

“…As demonstrated in previous research studies 6 , 27 , 28 , 71 , 72 , a large amount of cryptic biodiversity concealed amidst natural medical materials has not been discovered yet. DNA barcoding provided an effective tool for the discovery of cryptic species in the field of ecology and taxonomy 73 , 74 .…”

Characterization of the chloroplast genome of Dalbergia latifolia (Fabaceae) and its phylogenetic relationship with other Dalbergia species

“…It is considered as the most valuable genomic resource for phylogenomics, species authentication and evolutionary studies due to its high copy number, potential for cross‐species amplification, uniparental inheritance, haploid nature, lack of recombination, low nucleotide substitution rate and availability of single copy genes (Hu et al 2017, Xue et al 2019, Daniell et al 2021). Phyletic patterns derived using Cp genomes has provided insights into crucial evolutionary events like colonization and speciation across all lineages of plants (Wu et al 2012), facilitated taxonomic revisions (Daniell et al 2021), supported genetic diversity (Magdy et al 2019, Li et al 2020a) and varietal discrimination studies (Li et al 2020b, Wang et al 2021).…”

Species diversity analysis of commercial Mantidis Ootheca samples contaminated by store pests based on DNA metabarcoding

“…It is assumed that there is a complex biological composition in wild Chinese medicines [ 26 , 27 ]. Previous research has indicated misidentifications due to the great variety of Mantis Ootheca available which are morphologically similar [ 5 ].…”