Predictive Chromatography of Leaf Extracts Through Encoded Environmental Forcing on Phytochemical Synthesis.

Junelle Rey C Bacong,Drandreb Earl O Juanico

doi:10.3389/fpls.2021.613507

Junelle Rey C Bacong, Drandreb Earl O Juanico

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.613507

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Abstract

Environment fluctuations can influence a plant's phytochemical profile via phenotypic plasticity. This adaptive response ensures a plant's survival under fluctuating growth conditions. However, the resulting plant extract composition becomes unpredictable, which is a problem for highly standardized medicinal applications. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, the feasibility of tracking the changes in the phytochemical profile based on real-time measurements of a few environment and extract-preparation variables. As a result, we predicted the chromatograms of Blumea balsamifera extracts through an imputation-augmented convolutional neural network, which uses the image-transformed temporal measurements of the variables. We developed a sensor network that collected data in a greenhouse and a training algorithm that concurrently generated a data representation of the implicit plant-environment interactions leading to the mutable chromatograms of leaf extracts. We anticipate the generic applicability of the method for any plant and recognize its potential for addressing the standardization problems in plant therapeutics.

Highlights

Plants may be thought of as factories that synthesize highly complex and unusual substances for various medical and non-medical applications (Mishra and Tiwari, 2011; Nikam et al, 2012)
The plants’ phenotypic plasticity in response to stress and their environment can add significant variability to the phytochemical make-up of raw herbal materials. This inherent variability in plant extracts caused by plant-environment interactions make the standardization of herbal formulations, and other plant therapeutics challenging
We have demonstrated the feasibility of tracking the changes in the phytochemical profile of plant extracts based on real-time measurements of a few environment and extract-preparation variables

Summary

Introduction

Plants may be thought of as factories that synthesize highly complex and unusual substances for various medical and non-medical applications (Mishra and Tiwari, 2011; Nikam et al, 2012) These complex phytochemical mixtures in herbal or plant-derived medicines have been shown to have advantages over the single molecules that are isolated or synthetically modified from natural sources (Rodriguez-Concepcion et al, 2006; Carmona and Soares Pereira, 2013; Ekor, 2014). The production of herbal medicines is a gradual and meticulous process It involves three basic steps: (i) identification of herbs based on macroscopical and microscopical features; (ii) evaluation of drugs for the confirmation of their identity and purity; and (iii) standardization (Kunle et al, 2012; Newmaster et al, 2013). The standardization of herbal formulations encompasses all of the quality control measures taken during the manufacturing process such as sample preparation and phytochemical evaluation, as well as microbial, biological, and toxicity testing (Calixto, 2000; Rodriguez-Concepcion et al, 2006; Kunle et al, 2012; Newmaster et al, 2013)

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