Metabolic profiling of Lomatozona artemisiifolia Baker plants grown in vitro and collected from nature using molecular networking and chemometric analysis

Abstract

Brazilian Cerrado is recognised as a biodiversity hotspot due to the presence of endemic species with great biological potential. Particularly, Lomatozona artemisiifolia, is a rare species found in the Cerrado region in midwestern Brazil. Efforts have been made for its conservation in the Cerrado, such as the use of in vitro micropropagation, demanding a comparative analysis between grown plants and those collected from nature. For this purpose, we performed the chemical study of L. artemisiifolia by LC-ESI-MS/MS and molecular networking analysis in the Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) with in silico annotation using Network Annotation Propagation (NAP), which led to the observation of labdane diterpenes and flavonoid subclasses as the most representative specialised metabolites of this plant. In addition, molecular networking and chemometric analysis were correlated, allowing the metabolite profile emerging from field growth and micropropagation conditions to be observed.