Metabolites Software-Assisted Flavonoid Hunting in Plants Using Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Quadrupole-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry
Wan-Yi Gu,
Na Li,
Elaine Lai-Han Leung,
Hua Zhou,
Guo-An Luo,
Liang Liu,
Jian-Lin Wu
Affiliations
Wan-Yi Gu
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Na Li
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Elaine Lai-Han Leung
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Hua Zhou
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Guo-An Luo
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Liang Liu
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Jian-Lin Wu
State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao, China
Plant secondary metabolism drives the generation of metabolites used for host plant resistance, as biopesticides and botanicals, even for the discovery of new therapeutics for human diseases. Flavonoids are one of the largest and most studied classes of specialized plant metabolites. To quickly identify the potential bioactive flavonoids in herbs, a metabolites software-assisted flavonoid hunting approach was developed, which mainly included three steps: firstly, utilizing commercial metabolite software, a flavonoids database was established based on the biosynthetic pathways; secondly, mass spectral data of components in herbs were acquired by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS); and finally, the acquired LC-MS data were imported into the database and the compounds in the herbs were automatically identified by comparison of their mass spectra with the theoretical values. As a case study, the flavonoids in Smilax glabra were profiled using this approach. As a result, 104 flavonoids including 27 potential new compounds were identified. To our knowledge, this is the first report on profiling the components in the plants utilizing the plant metabolic principles with the assistance of metabolites software. This approach can be extended to the analysis of flavonoids in other plants.
