A Multi-Level Strategy Based on Metabolic and Molecular Genetic Approaches for the Characterization of Different Coptis Medicines Using HPLC-UV and RAD-seq Techniques.

Furong Zhong,Luming Qi,Chan Shen,Yuntong Ma

doi:10.3390/molecules23123090

Abstract

Coptis plants (Ranunculaceae) to have played an important role in the prevention and treatment human diseases in Chinese history. In this study, a multi-level strategy based on metabolic and molecular genetic methods was performed for the characterization of four Coptis herbs (C. chinensis, C. deltoidea, C. omeiensis and C. teeta) using high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet (HPLC-UV) and restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) techniques. Protoberberine alkaloids including berberine, palmatine, coptisine, epiberberine, columbamine, jatrorrhizine, magnoflorine and groenlandicine in rhizomes were identified and determined based on the HPLC-UV method. Among them, berberine was demonstrated as the most abundant compound in these plants. RAD-seq was applied to discover single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) data. A total of 44,747,016 reads were generated and 2,443,407 SNPs were identified in regarding to four plants. Additionally, with respect to complicated metabolic and SNP data, multivariable statistical methods of principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were successively applied to interpret the structure characteristics. The metabolic variation and genetic relationship among different Coptis plants were successfully illustrated based on data visualization. Summarily, this comprehensive strategy has been proven as a reliable and effective approach to characterize Coptis plants, which can provide additional information for their quality assessment.

Highlights

Traditional Chinese medicine which has a long application history is increasingly used and widely accepted at present [1,2]
Rhizoma Coptidis are mainly derived from several Coptis plants including Coptis chinensis Franch., C. deltoidea C.Y
The result for alkaloid compounds are ranged from 97.52% to 103.35% with relative standard deviations (RSD) less than 2.16%

Summary

Introduction

Traditional Chinese medicine which has a long application history is increasingly used and widely accepted at present [1,2]. Medicinal Coptis plants (Ranunculaceae) have been widely used for preventing and treating human diseases for centuries in China. Their dried rhizomes, named Rhizoma Coptidis (Huanglian in Chinese) can be utilized as anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antidiabetic agents. The other three species are always used as the substitutes because of their similar medicinal constituents and therapeutic effects, in order to perform a better-quality assessment, it is essential to develop a reliable strategy for characterizing the variation among these Coptis plants for a reasonable exploitation of these medicinal resources

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion