Abstract
Validity of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is oppugned very often because of the bugs of quality, effectiveness, and repeatability. Standardization of TCMs is one way to make a change. How to realize standardization of TCMs and with what measures to shape the quality control system, is provoking much debate in the TCM field. Genetic and chemical profiling were comparatively performed on Alstonia scholaris in China through amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis and alkaloid high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) scanning, aiming to evaluate the attributes of chemical and DNA fingerprinting as applicable tools for quality control of TCMs and explore theoretic strategy of TCM standardization. Each individual of A. schlolaris displayed a unique AFLP or HPLC profile, indicating well individual-distinguishing ability of the two techniques. Patterns of variance structure disclosed by the HPLC and AFLP profiling were similar, and more than 50% of alkaloid loci were kept constant across any single population, suggesting a genetic basis of the alkaloid secondary metabolism in the plant and justifying DNA fingerprinting as a qualified identifier for quality control of the TCM. Compared to the alkaloid HPLC scanning, the AFLP analysis produced much more loci with lower polymorphic loci percentage, suggesting that AFLP can be more statistically informative and with moderate sensitivity. In passing, a strategy pursuing genetically identical TCMs by popularizing plantation of selected germplasm of medicinal plants was suggested for TCM standardization. Key words: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), standardization, Alstonia scholaris, alkaloid scanning, genetic profiling.
Highlights
Alstonia scholaris is an evergreen tree with white perfumed flowers, growing in mixed forests and village groves from 200 to 1000 m a.s.l. in the tropical and subtropical areas such as Southern Yunnan and Southwestern Guangxi, and cultivated in Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan, Hunan, Taiwan and as an ornamental in China (Li et al, 1995)
What are the attributes of these two kinds of marker? How effective are the two measures when used as identifier? How about their distinguishing ability? Are they perfect identifiers throughout the whole industrial production process of a specific traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)? Such questions have remained to be resolved since phytochemical and genetic studies are often separately performed on different medicinal plants by different investigators
In this paper, we used genetic and chemical profiling as a framework to look at the genetic and alkaloid variation within A. scholaris in China, evaluated the attributes of chemical and DNA fingerprinting as applicable tools for quality control of TCMs and explored theoretic strategy to realize TCM standardization
Summary
Alstonia scholaris is an evergreen tree with white perfumed flowers, growing in mixed forests and village groves from 200 to 1000 m a.s.l. in the tropical and subtropical areas such as Southern Yunnan and Southwestern Guangxi, and cultivated in Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan, Hunan, Taiwan and as an ornamental in China (Li et al, 1995) It has been widely used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat various diseases such as headache, influenza, malaria, bronchitis and pneumo-. The effectiveness and safety of TCM is rationally based This is the very reason that TCM has been seeing an increasing business volume in China. A stockpile of a specific TCM in a drugstore might come from different geographical area and might differ in heredity and chemical constituents This is one of the reasons that the patients often complain about the quality, effectiveness and repeatability of TCMs and that some countries refuse TCM usage. Systematic comparative studies of phytochemical and genetic diversity of medicinal plants are still limited
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