Introduction: Role of highly informative high-performance liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) methods in quality control is increasing. Complex herbal products and formulations can simultaneously contain extracts from different plants. Therefore, due to the leads to lack of commercial standards it is important to develop novel approaches for comprehensive treatment of big datasets. Objective: The aim of this study is to create a straightforward and information-saving algorithm for the identification of plants extracts in commercial products. Material and methods: In total, 34 samples, including Glycyrrhiza glabra and Panax ginseng dried roots; and Abrus precatorius dried leaves, their double and triple mixtures and flavoured oolong tea samples were analysed by HPLC-MS and combined in a three-dimensional dataset (retention time-mass-to-charge ratio (m/z)-samples). This dataset was subjected to smoothing and denoising techniques and further decomposed using parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC). Results: Samples were divided into eight clusters; loading matrices were interpreted and the presence of the most characteristic triterpene glycoside groups was demonstrated and supported by the characteristic chromatogram approach. The occurrence of Abrus precatorius and G. glabra additives in flavoured tea was confirmed. Conclusion: Developed HPLC-MS-PARAFAC method is potentially reliable and an efficient tool for handling untreated experimental data and its future development may lead to more comprehensive evaluation of chemical composition and quality control of food additives and other complex mixtures.
Evaluation of safety, quality and composition of herbal products and food supplements based on botanical ingredients is a matter of serious concern. For screening of botanicals in herbal products multitargeted and group-targeted approaches may be applied. In the group-targeted approach botanicals are characterized by means of an appropriate group of structurally related biomarkers compared with the multitargeted approach where a number of selected analytes are monitored based on a multiple reaction monitoring survey. In this study a unified strategy for quality control of herbal products was developed on the basis of fast ultrasound-assisted extraction, chromatographic separation and mass spectrometric quantification of bioactive compounds. A large list of unique biomarkers were monitored under almost identical chromatographic conditions, while an efficient strategy for HPLC-MS group-targeted analysis was also developed for comprehensive evaluation of chemical composition of botanicals intensively used for herbal product manufacturing. In the latter case, structurally close compounds were determined in a single ion monitoring mode for the characteristic group of fragment ions, allowing fast profiling and quality assessment of the plant material or complex food supplement. The sensitivity of the developed approaches was on the level of 1-50 ng/mL, which is higher than that of existing HPLC-UV quality control methods.
Arctic brown algae of the species Fucus vesiculosus are characterized by a high content of polyphenolic compounds - phlorotannins, exhibiting high biological activity. The aim of this study is to develop a methodology for the isolation and analysis of biologically active polyphenolic compounds from arctic brown algae. The proposed scheme for the isolation of polyphenols from Fucus vesiculosus brown algae is based on the principles of "green chemistry" and is carried out by sequential disassembly of the biomass of the plant object with the release of associated components (lipid-pigment complex, polysaccharides, mannitol) and maximum yield of polyphenol fraction. As a result of the experimental work, the optimal parameters for carrying out each stage of the proposed scheme were determined and a stepwise assessment of its effectiveness was carried out. The extractable fraction of polyphenols contains up to 67% of polyphenols relative to their content in the initial biomass, and the proportion of polyphenols in the fraction is up to 83%. A study of the phlorotannins fraction showed that its antioxidant activity is meaningful and it was 553±24 (mg of ascorbic acid/g extract). The polymolecular composition of the target fraction was investigated by the method of exclusion gel filtration chromatography, which showed the polymodal distribution, indicating the presence of several groups of components - low molecular weight and high molecular weight phlorotannins with masses ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of Daltons. The data obtained using chromatography-mass spectrometry and MALDI mass spectrometry make it possible to identify the presence of low molecular weight phlorotannins in the polyphenol fraction with masses from 250 to 1638 Da, which are close analogues in structure.
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