Gut microbiota-assisted isolation of flavonoids with a galloyl moiety from flowers of meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria (L.) Maxim

Abstract

The consideration of natural product metabolism by human gut microbiota has become a crucial issue, which needs to be addressed during examinations of their bioactivity. The gut microbiota metabolism of Filipendulae ulmariae flos extract was studied. Differences in the dynamics of the deconjugation of flavonoid glycosides depending on their chemical structure were observed. The metabolism of galloylated flavonol glycosides was slower than that of other flavonols. The biotransformation of the raw extract by gut microbiota was used for preliminary purification. The incubation method was optimized to obtain a simplified mixture, based on differences in the flavonoids’ biotransformation dynamics and estimating a suitable incubation time. Pretreatment reduced the number of substances with similar retention parameters, increasing the separation efficiency and enabling the isolation of pure substances, namely, quercetin 3-O-β-(2″-O-galloyl)-d-galactopyranoside, quercetin 3-O-β-(2″-O-galloyl)-d-glucopyranoside and kaempferol 3-O-β-(2″-O-galloyl)-d-glucopyranoside.