Integrated Approach for Species Identification and Quality Analysis for Labisia pumila Using DNA Barcoding and HPLC.

Auni Aqilah Ahmad Tarmizi,Farah Izana Abdullah,Rosnani Hasham,Lee Suan Chua,Suraiya Binte Mostafiz,Faezah Mohd Salleh,Alina Wagiran

doi:10.3390/plants10040717

Auni Aqilah Ahmad Tarmizi, Farah Izana Abdullah + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10040717

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Abstract

Labisia pumila is a precious herb in Southeast Asia that is traditionally used as a health supplement and has been extensively commercialized due to its claimed therapeutic properties in boosting a healthy female reproductive system. Indigenous people used these plants by boiling the leaves; however, in recent years it has been marketed as powdered or capsuled products. Accordingly, accuracy in determination of the authenticity of these modern herbal products has faced great challenges. Lack of authenticity is a public health risk because incorrectly used herbal species can cause adverse effects. Hence, any measures that may aid product authentication would be beneficial. Given the widespread use of Labisia herbal products, the current study focuses on authenticity testing via an integral approach of DNA barcoding and qualitative analysis using HPLC. This study successfully generated DNA reference barcodes (ITS2 and rbcL) for L. pumila var. alata and pumila. The DNA barcode that was generated was then used to identify species of Labisia pumila in herbal medicinal products, while HPLC was utilized to determine their quality. The findings through the synergistic approach (DNA barcode and HPLC) implemented in this study indicate the importance of both methods in providing the strong evidence required for the identification of true species and to examine the authenticity of such herbal medicinal products.

Highlights

Herbal medicine consists of herbs, herbal preparations, and mixtures of finished products that contain active ingredients from plant parts or plant materials [1]
The sequencing result of the amplified internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) revealed that the length of the generated L. pumila ITS2 was 291 bp
The analyzed sequences of the barcode region revealed that the ITS2 barcode region showed a high degree of identity, which was 98.79% similar to the GenBank hit generated [35] of L. pumila var. lanceolata (MH766971.1) from BLASTn (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool analysis (Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

Herbal medicine consists of herbs, herbal preparations, and mixtures of finished products that contain active ingredients from plant parts or plant materials [1]. Herbal medicinal products come in various forms, commonly in processed or modified forms (dried material, tablets, powders, capsules, or tablets), thereby presenting a challenge in accurately distinguishing genuine products from fake ones [4]. Intensive tissue culture propagations of Labisia pumila as a high-quality raw product material have been performed [5,6]; the market demand exceeds the supply. Several factors contribute to a dwindling of supply such as uncontrolled harvesting activities from the wild, limited cultivation area, and high dependency on imported raw materials. This situation eventually led to the adulteration of raw materials, generating poor-quality products

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