Dynamic changes of metabolite accumulation in Scrophulariae Radix based on liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry combined with multivariate statistical analysis

Abstract

Scrophulariae Radix is one of the most popular traditional Chinese medicines. The harvesting time of Scrophulariae Radix is closely related to the quality of products in this traditional Chinese medicine. The goal of the study is to analyze the dynamic changes of metabolite accumulation in Scrophulariae Radix. The difference of constituents in Scrophulariae Radix harvested at different times was analyzed by liquid chromatography with triple quadrupole-time of flight tandem mass spectrometry coupled with principal component analysis and partial least-square discriminant analysis. According to the accurate mass of molecular and product ions provided by triple quadrupole-time of flight tandem mass spectrometry, a total of 30 differential constituents were identified. Furthermore, the contents of ten index differential constituents in Scrophulariae Radix were simultaneously determined by liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole-linear ion trap tandem mass spectrometry. Gray relational analysis was performed to evaluate the samples harvested at different times according to the contents of ten constituents. All of the results demonstrated that the quality of Scrophulariae Radix collected at traditional harvest time was better. This study will provide the basic information for revealing the dynamic change law of metabolite accumulation of Scrophulariae Radix and exploring its quality forming mechanism.

Evaluation of Chrysanthemi Indici Flos germplasms based on nine bioactive constituents and color parameters

“…Medicinal materials have many kinds of pharmacology constituents that play considerable roles in physiological regulation through synergistic or antagonistic effects, and it is inappropriate to rely on only a few constituents to assess their quality [17,18]. GRA is a method used for the comprehensive description and quantitative evaluation of multiple factors, and makes full use of the information differences of related things to compare and sort complex systems, as well as to realize dimensions and simplification reductions of information [19,20]. It has been used to evaluate the quality of medicinal materials, such as Pseudostellariae Radix [15], Magnoliae Officinalis Cortex [21], Prunellae Spica [22], etc.…”

A comprehensive study of the aerial parts of Lonicera japonica Thunb. based on metabolite profiling coupled with PLS‐DA

“…The Chinese pharmacopeia officially records that the best harvest season of LJC is autumn or winter, while the optimal harvest time of LJF is early summer. This indicates that the harvest time of different TCMs affects the quality of TCMs 5,6 . In addition, the chemical composition and content are of crucial importance to the quality of medicinal plants, and determine their curative effects in the clinical setting.…”

“…Chemical composition has historically presented a bottleneck in understanding of the elusive component‐effect correlation of TCMs. Many factors may lead to changes in the chemical composition of medicinal materials, including harvest season, 5,6 processing methods, 7 and biological and abiotic factors 8–10 . A systematic study of the chemical composition of LJF and LJC could identify the chemical markers that differentiate LJF and LJC, and could clarify their respective properties.…”

Comparison of Chemical Constituents in Pseudostellariae Radix with Different Dosage Forms Based on HPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap/MS Combined with Multivariate Statistical Analysis

“…Metabolomics technology is a new omics technology developed in the mid-1990s, among which plant metabolomics is a high-throughput, unbiased, and comprehensive analysis technology for metabolomics in plant extracts, and it is especially fit for the analysis of multicomponent complex systems of TCM [12][13][14]. In recent years, liquidmass coupling technology is widely used in the qualitative and quantitative research of complex TCM systems [15,16], and the commonly used mass spectrometry techniques include quadrupole mass spectrometry, ion trap mass spectrometry, time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and compound tandem mass spectrometry [17][18][19][20]. e structure of the compounds can be rapidly identified based on the fragmentation information of the multistage mass spectrometry compounds and related database.…”