Metabolomics and DNA-Based Authentication of Two Traditional Asian Medicinal and Aromatic Species of Salvia subg. Perovskia

Abstract

Subgenus Perovskia of the extended genus of Salvia comprises several Central Asian medicinal and aromatic species, of which S. yangii and S. abrotanoides are the most widespread. These plants are cultivated in Europe as robust ornamentals, and several cultivars are available. However, their medicinal potential remains underutilized because of limited information about their phytochemical and genetic diversity. Thus, we combined an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF-MS) based metabolomics with DNA barcoding approach based on trnH-psbA and ITS2 barcodes to clarify the relationships between these two taxa. Metabolomic analysis demonstrated that aerial parts are more similar than roots and none of the major compounds stand out as distinct. Sugiol in S. yangii leaves and carnosic acid quinone in S. abrotanoides were mostly responsible for their chemical differentiation, whereas in roots the distinction was supported by the presence of five norditerpenoids in S. yangii and two flavonoids and one norditerpenoid in S. abrotanoides. To verify the metabolomics-based differentiation, we performed DNA authentication that revealed S. yangii and S. abrotanoides to be very closely related but separate species. We demonstrated that DNA barcoding coupled with parallel LC-MS profiling constitutes a powerful tool in identification of taxonomically close Salvia species.

Seasonal Variations of Rosmarinic Acid and Its Glucoside and Expression of Genes Related to Their Biosynthesis in Two Medicinal and Aromatic Species of Salvia subg. Perovskia

“…Salvia abrotanoides and S. yangii plants were grown at the experimental field in the Botanical Garden of Medicinal Plants (BGMP) at the Wroclaw Medical University (Poland) and as described in the previous paper [ 60 ]. In the present experiments, we used the roots (SA R and SY R) and leaves (SA L and SY L) of the wild-type clones for which the voucher specimens were deposited in the BGMP’s herbarium under the reference numbers: S. abrotanoides : P-122; S. yangii : P-123.…”

“…Selected climate features of the year of harvest (2016) together with the data of the precedent years 2015, 2014 and the period of 1986–2005 are shown in the Supplementary Table S1 . The plant material for both molecular and phytochemical analysis was processed as described previously [ 60 ].…”

“…The samples for qualitative profiling were prepared according to the procedure published previously [ 60 ].…”

“…The detailed system settings and chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis conditions have been described previously [ 60 ].…”

“…Recently, a targeted comparison of the metabolic profiles of S. yangii and S. abrotanoides revealed differences between these two species, despite a close taxonomic relationship [ 60 ]. The analysis showed the presence of 14 different phenylpropanoids in leaves of both S. yangii and S. abrotanoides .…”