Abstract
As adulterated and substituted Chinese medicinal materials are common in the market, therapeutic effectiveness of such materials cannot be guaranteed. Identification at species-, strain- and locality-levels, therefore, is required for quality assurance/control of Chinese medicine. This review provides an informative introduction to DNA methods for authentication of Chinese medicinal materials. Technical features and examples of the methods based on sequencing, hybridization and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are described and their suitability for different identification objectives is discussed.
Highlights
Chinese medicinal materials have long been used for disease prevention and therapy in China and are becoming increasingly popular in the West [1,2,3]
Despite the belief that Chinese medicines are of natural origin which have few adverse effects, there have been numerous reports on adverse effects associated with herbal remedies [5]
Authentication of Chinese medicinal materials is important for ensuring safe and appropriate use of Chinese medicines, ensuring the therapeutic effectiveness, minimizing unfair trade and raising consumers' confidence towards Chinese medicines. It plays an important role in the modernization, industrialization and internationalization of Chinese medicine
Summary
Chinese medicinal materials have long been used for disease prevention and therapy in China and are becoming increasingly popular in the West [1,2,3]. Development cost: cost for developing standardized reference results for target samples Running cost: cost for routine testing Detection of contamination: same target species = samples of the same strain or locality; non-target species = adulterants or substitutes Multi-locus: simultaneous amplification of multiple regions in the genome in a single PCR Prior sequence requirement: sequence requirement to design primers for amplification or probes for hybridization Throughput: number of samples that can be handled within a given period of time Reliability: giving reproducible and accurate results under the same conditions a: enzyme dependent b: band/no band, or size polymorphism c: band or no band d: null allele or size polymorphism e: band number and size polymorphism f: presence/absence of all the bands in a pattern g: sequence dependent; nucleotide difference h: presence or absence of sample DNA i: restriction enzyme dependent j: primer dependent k: sequence dependent l: crude tolerated
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