Comparative Study of Abiotic Stress Factors on GC-MS-Detected Phytoconstituents of Aloe greatheadii var: davyana Using Heat Map and Hierarchical Clustering Dendrogram

Abstract

Aloe greatheadii var. davyana or spotted aloe is indigenous to South Africa and widely distributed in the northern provinces. The plant has a vast ethnopharmacological application which is mostly attributed to its phytochemical content. The aim of the study was to examine the effect of abiotic stress factors on the plant’s phytochemical content. The phytochemical content of A. greatheadii hexane extracts from four different provinces (Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and North West), harvested from the wild at varied altitudes, rainfall patterns, and soil types, was examined using gas chromatography-mass spectra (GC-MS). The phytochemical content of hexane extracts from the four South African provinces was analysed using heat map analysis and hierarchical clustering dendrogram. The phytochemical content of A. greatheadii hexane extracts was composed of fatty acids, alkanes, benzene, carboxylic acids, ketones, phytosterols, and vitamins. Eicosane, henicosane, and [(2S)-2-[(2R)-4-hexadecanoyloxy-3-hydroxy-5-oxo-2H-furan-2-yl]-2-hydroxyethyl] hexadecanoate were the only compounds detected in all samples from the four provinces. The concentration levels of 2-(((2-ethylhexyl)oxy)carbonyl) benzoic acid, beta-sitosterol, tritetracontane, and ethyl 13-methyltetradecanoate were closely related and expressed a low clustering distance amongst the samples. Variations in soil pH, soil type, and rainfall patterns were detected and differed in the four provinces. The different abiotic stress factors affected the biochemical pathways for the different compounds, with conditions in Gauteng being less favourable for many of the compounds detected. Abiotic stress factors have shown to influence phytochemical biochemical pathways and quantity. Aloe greatheadii plants can be selected based on location seemingly due to the variations that persist in their phytochemical content.

Identification of Daphne genkwa and Its Vinegar-Processed Products by Ultraperformance Liquid Chromatography–Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry and Chemometrics

“…The mass accuracy of all assigned components was less than 5 ppm, relative to the empirical molecular formulas of the compounds known to exist in DG. To present the level of change in the differential compounds, a heat map was generated to show the relative levels of each compound in CHDG and VPDG [ 43 ] ( Figure 4 ). The intensities of ions a and b were higher in VPDG than those in CHDG, indicating that the two components correlated to ions a and b could be used as potential characteristic markers to distinguish between VPDG and CHDG.…”

Datura stramonium Flowers as a Potential Natural Resource of Bioactive Molecules: Identification of Anti-Inflammatory Agents and Molecular Docking Analysis

“…Heatmap cluster analysis is a popular strategy to cluster medicinal plants based on their biological activities [ 40 ]. It is an efficient tool to facilitate the comparison between plant extracts [ 41 ]. Benabderrahim and collaborators [ 22 ] have used heatmap clustering of plant extracts based on phenol compound composition and antioxidant activity to identify two main clusters.…”

Dendrogram of transparent feature importance machine learning statistics to classify associations for heart failure: A reanalysis of a retrospective cohort study of the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database

“…Heat maps are particularly useful in condensing large amounts of information into a concise visual representation, and have been applied to gene expression, sequencing, geographic data, and population densities [ 48 ]. To better understand the complex relationships described by machine learning models, we proposed utilizing dendrograms and heat maps to describe the gain, cover, and frequency of covariates [ 49 , 50 ]. We found that the cluster produced by the dendrogram is similar to that produced by the SHAP value.…”