Abstract
Epimedium folium is the major medicinally-used organ of Epimedium species and its metabolic changes during the leaf growth have not been studied at the metabolomic level. E. pubescens is one of five recorded species in the Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China and widely grows in China. A UPLC-ESI-MS/MS-based targeted metabolomic analysis was implemented to explore the metabolite composition in E. pubescens leaves under the cultivation condition and further to investigate their temporal variations among four representative growth stages. A total of 403 metabolites, including 32 hitherto known in Epimedium species, were identified in E. pubescens leaf, of which 302 metabolites showed the growth/development-dependent alterations. Flavonoid-type compounds were the major composition of the metabolites identified in this study. Most flavonoids, together with tannin-type and lignans and coumarin-type compounds, were up-regulated with E. pubescens leaf growth and maturation after the full flowering stage. Our results not only greatly enriched the existing Epimedium phytochemical composition database and also, for the first time, provided the metabolomics-wide information on metabolic changes during E. pubescens leaf growth and development, which would facilitate in the choice of an optimum harvest time to balance a higher biomass yield of Epimedium folium with its better medicinal quality.
Highlights
Epimedium species in Epimedium Linn. (Berberidaceace) are perennial shade herbal plants and widely distributed in the world including China, Japan, Korean, North Africa, Europe, and India [1].Till a total of 81 species have been identified in Epimedium Linn. (Berberidaceace family), according to the recent NCBI taxonomy database, and more than half of them were found in China
In our shaded field condition, E. pubescens seedlings with tender leaves emerged by the end of February and early
Flowering occurred from March and peaked in middle our shaded field condition, E. pubescens seedlings with tender leaves emerged by the end of
Summary
Zhenxian Qin, Dengqun Liao , Yalan Chen, Chenyang Zhang, Ruipeng An, Qing Zeng and Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical Received: 7 December 2019; Accepted: 27 December 2019; Published: 29 December 2019
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