Is Our Natural Food Our Homeostasis? Array of a Thousand Effect-Directed Profiles of 68 Herbs and Spices

Abstract

The beneficial effects of plant-rich diets and traditional medicines are increasingly recognized in the treatment of civilization diseases due to the abundance and diversity of bioactive substances therein. However, the important active portion of natural food or plant-based medicine is presently not under control. Hence, a paradigm shift from quality control based on marker compounds to effect-directed profiling is postulated. We investigated 68 powdered plant extracts (botanicals) which are added to food products in food industry. Among them are many plants that are used as traditional medicines, herbs and spices. A generic strategy was developed to evaluate the bioactivity profile of each botanical as completely as possible and to straightforwardly assign the most potent bioactive compounds. It is an 8-dimensional hyphenation of normal-phase high-performance thin-layer chromatography with multi-imaging by ultraviolet, visible and fluorescence light detection as well as effect-directed assay and heart-cut of the bioactive zone to orthogonal reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromato-graphy−photodiode array detection−heated electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. In the non-target, effect-directed screening via 16 different on-surface assays, we tentatively assigned more than 60 important bioactive compounds in the studied botanicals. These were antibacterials, estrogens, antiestrogens, androgens, and antiandrogens, as well as acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, α-amylase, α-glucosidase, β-glucosidase, β-glucuronidase, and tyrosinase inhibitors, which were on-surface heart-cut eluted from the bioautogram or enzyme inhibition autogram to the next dimension for further targeted characterization. This biological-physicochemical hyphenation is able to detect and control active mechanisms of traditional medicines or botanicals as well as the essentials of plant-based food. The array of 1,292 profiles (68 samples × 19 detections) showed the versatile bioactivity potential of natural food. It reveals how efficiently and powerful our natural food contributes to our homeostasis.

Effect-Directed Profiling of Monofloral Honeys from Ethiopia by High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography and High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

“…It can be assumed that the slightly brighter color (when compared to the purple background) over the length of all tracks in the effect-directed profiling via the DPPH• assay ( Figure 2 and Figure 3 ) was caused by C 9 H 7 NO. Thus, M6 could also contribute to a synergistic radical scavenging effect with other compounds, as observed in other studies [ 22 ]. Interestingly, the mass signals of C 9 H 7 NO were not found in all zones.…”

“…After effect detection, the number of assignable mass signals in the recorded HRMS spectra from a better resolved zone should be reduced. As another option, a 2D separation using orthogonal mobile phases [ 37 ] or an orthogonal 8D hyphenation [ 22 ] can be studied for honey samples to differentiate the mass signals and to highlight the mass signals responsible for the individual effects.…”

“…This would provide more understanding of honey quality than is possible with simple in vitro assays (providing only sum parameters for complex samples) or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (without actual proof of activity). Such a non-target effect-directed profiling was shown for plant-based food [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ], but has not yet been applied for Ethiopian honey samples. In this study, a profiling method was developed to detect individual bioactive compounds in honey.…”

Essential Oils as Multicomponent Mixtures and Their Potential for Human Health and Well-Being

“…the “multi components result in multi targets” theory ( Nahrstedt and Butterweck, 2010 ; Schwabl et al, 2013 ). The streamlined analysis of 68 different botanicals does not only highlight such versatility in potential biofunctional properties, but also prove that such multi-compounds may interact with various metabolic pathways ( Morlock, 2021 ; Schreiner et al, 2021 ). Furthermore, MOCS may modulate their mutual resorption, but also for specific compounds from food or medicines and may also affect typical characteristics of smell and taste ( Karalis et al, 2008 ; Ku et al, 2020 ).…”

Grundlagenpapier der AG Fragen der Ernährung

“…Hilfestellung bieten hierzu z. B. Veröffentlichungen des BfR [23] und der EFSA zu bedenklichen Pflanzenstoffen [21,35] und zur Sicherheitsbewertung [36] Ȥ deren Ausgangsmaterial verschiedene lokale Bezeichnungen haben kann, Ȥ die bei den Verkehrskreisen unbekannt sind, Ȥ bei denen üblicherweise unterschiedliche Pflanzenteile verwendet werden können, Ȥ die verschiedene Substanzklassen mit unterschiedlicher ernährungsphysiologischer Wirkung enthalten. Auch die Rolle des Extraktes im Kontext des gesamten Lebensmittels ist zu berücksichtigen, z.…”