Quality Evaluation of Juniperus rigida Sieb. et Zucc. Based on Phenolic Profiles, Bioactivity, and HPLC Fingerprint Combined with Chemometrics

Abstract

Juniperus rigida (J. rigida) which is endemic to East Asia, has traditionally been used as an ethnomedicinal plant in China. This study was undertaken to evaluate the quality of J. rigida samples derived from 11 primary regions in China. Ten phenolic compounds were simultaneously quantified using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), and chlorogenic acid, catechin, podophyllotoxin, and amentoflavone were found to be the main compounds in J. rigida needles, with the highest contents detected for catechin and podophyllotoxin. J. rigida from Jilin (S9, S10) and Liaoning (S11) exhibited the highest contents of phenolic profiles (total phenolics, total flavonoids and 10 phenolic compounds) and the strongest antioxidant and antibacterial activities, followed by Shaanxi (S2, S3). A similarity analysis (SA) demonstrated substantial similarities in fingerprint chromatograms, from which 14 common peaks were selected. The similarity values varied from 0.85 to 0.98. Chemometrics techniques, including hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), principal component analysis (PCA), and discriminant analysis (DA), were further applied to facilitate accurate classification and quantification of the J. rigida samples derived from the 11 regions. The results supported HPLC data showing that all J. rigida samples exhibit considerable variations in phenolic profiles, and the samples were further clustered into three major groups coincident with their geographical regions of origin. In addition, two discriminant functions with a 100% discrimination ratio were constructed to further distinguish and classify samples with unknown membership on the basis of eigenvalues to allow optimal discrimination among the groups. Our comprehensive findings on matching phenolic profiles and bioactivities along with data from fingerprint chromatograms with chemometrics provide an effective tool for screening and quality evaluation of J. rigida and related medicinal preparations.

Metabolite Profiles, Bioactivity, and HPLC Fingerprint of Different Varieties of Eucommia ulmoides Oliv.: Towards the Utilization of Medicinal and Commercial Chinese Endemic Tree

“…By the result of this procedure, six bacterial species were chosen for further analysis. The MIC and MBC values of the samples were estimated by the agar dilution method [ 38 ]. The samples was dissolved in DMSO (10%), and 1.5 mL stock solution incorporated into 13.5 mL Mueller–Hinton broth to obtain concentrations from 3.125 to 100 mg/mL.…”

Quality Variation of Goji (Fruits of Lycium spp.) in China: A Comparative Morphological and Metabolomic Analysis

“…In our study, we also include metabolomic profiling for quality assessment, which has not been used for goji yet. Chemometric approaches with chromatographic fingerprinting are known to be effective metabolomic methods for quality control of herbal medicine ( Donno et al, 2016a ; Guo et al, 2017 ; Liu et al, 2017 ; Martinez-Frances et al, 2017 ). Bioactivity-based characteristics are good quality indicators too, as they are pharmacologically relevant ( Walch et al, 2011 ; Liu et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Chemometric approaches with chromatographic fingerprinting are known to be effective metabolomic methods for quality control of herbal medicine ( Donno et al, 2016a ; Guo et al, 2017 ; Liu et al, 2017 ; Martinez-Frances et al, 2017 ). Bioactivity-based characteristics are good quality indicators too, as they are pharmacologically relevant ( Walch et al, 2011 ; Liu et al, 2017 ). Since goji was reported to have health protective effects against oxidative stress, and was recommended as a natural antioxidant ( Donno et al, 2015 ; Benchennouf et al, 2017 ), we assume that antioxidant effects are an adequate quality marker.…”

Quality Evaluation of Corydalis yanhusuo by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Fingerprinting Coupled with Multicomponent Quantitative Analysis

“…Secondary metabolites are the adaptation of plants to the environment in the long-term evolution. To some extent, the formula of "authentic www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ ingredients" has an admirable effect because of the role of "local variety", i.e., herbs planted in different geographical environments may have different chemical composition content and quality 36 .…”