Abstract
The changes of brain metabolism in mice after injection of ginseng glycoproteins (GPr) were analyzed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry- (GC/MS-) based metabolomics platform. The relationship between sedative and hypnotic effects of ginseng glycoproteins and brain metabolism was discussed. Referring to pentobarbital sodium subthreshold test, we randomly divided 20 mice into two groups: control and ginseng glycoproteins group. The mice from the control group were treated with normal saline by i.p and GPr group were treated with 60 mg/kg of GPr by i.p. The results indicated that GPr could significantly improve the sleep quality of mice. Through multivariate statistical analysis, we found that there were 23 differential metabolites in whole brain tissues between the control group and the GPr group. The pathway analysis exhibited that GPr may be involved in the regulation of the pathway including purine metabolism, nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism, glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, arginine and proline metabolism, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, and steroid hormone biosynthesis. This work is helpful to understand the biochemical mechanism of GPr on promoting sleep and lay a foundation for further development of drugs for insomnia.
Highlights
Dyssomnia is one of the most common health problems, involving difficulty getting to sleep, remaining asleep, or of excessive sleepiness
Epigenetics, transcriptomics, and proteomics all converge at the level of metabolomics and changes in metabolite concentrations are more substantial and defining than signals in other “omics”, metabolomics is considered to be the integration of all “omics”
The bubble diagram points out that ginseng glycoproteins imposed a significant impact on 4 metabolic pathways including arginine and proline metabolism, purine metabolism, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, and steroid hormone biosynthesis
Summary
Dyssomnia is one of the most common health problems, involving difficulty getting to sleep, remaining asleep, or of excessive sleepiness. Metabolomics is a high-sensitivity, high-throughput profiling method to study the characteristic changes in lowmolecular-weight metabolites [7]. Such an approach provides a comprehensive view of the changes in several metabolic and signaling pathways and their interactions [8]. Epigenetics, transcriptomics, and proteomics all converge at the level of metabolomics and changes in metabolite concentrations are more substantial and defining than signals in other “omics”, metabolomics is considered to be the integration of all “omics” It is more reliable, sensitive, and powerful in reflecting changes in biological functions due to either disease or drug action [9, 10]. Metabolomics is applied to sleep disorders recently [11]
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