Molecular Analysis of Chinese Celastrus and Tripterygium and Implications in Medicinal and Pharmacological Studies

Abstract

Celastrus and Tripterygium species, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine, have attracted much attention due to their anti-tumor promoting and neuroprotective activities, in addition to their applications in autoimmune disorders. However, systematic relationships between them and among species are unclear, and it may disturb their further medicinal utilization. In the present study, the molecular analysis of combined chloroplast and nuclear markers of all Chinese Celastrus and Tripterygium was performed, and clear inter- and intra-genus relationships were presented. The result suggests that Tripterygium constitute a natural monophyletic clade within Celastrus with strong support value. Fruit and seed type are better than inflorescence in subgeneric classification. Chinese Celastrus are classified for three sections: Sect. Sempervirentes (Maxim.) CY Cheng & TC Kao, Sect. Lunatus XY Mu & ZX Zhang, sect. nov., and Sect. Ellipticus XY Mu & ZX Zhang, sect. nov. The phylogenetic data was consistent with their chemical components reported previously. Owing to the close relationship, several evergreen Celastrus species are recommended for chemical and pharmacological studies. Our results also provide reference for molecular identification of Chinese Celastrus and Tripterygium.

Animal‐mediated long‐distance dispersals and migrations shaping the intercontinental disjunctions of Celastrus (Celastraceae) among five continents

“…Their separate generic positions were robustly supported by phylogenetic studies based on combined molecular and morphological data (Simmons et al, 2008, 2012). However, Tripterygium was found to be nested within the basal clade of Celastrus based on the combined nuclear and plastid markers with moderate support in two recent studies (Mu et al, 2012c, 2017). Interestingly, this study used the same molecular markers but employed a more strict sequence‐trimming standard and a dense taxon sampling scheme, and our results support the sister‐group relationship between Tripterygium and Celastrus (Fig.…”

“…InDels are common in molecular sequences, and they have been reported to be phylogenetically informative (Dwivedi & Gadagkar, 2009;Donath & Stadler, 2018). The sequences were aligned by MAFFT (Katoh et al, 2019) and further trimmed using strict standards in this study (vs. manually aligned and many InDels were kept in the previous studies by Mu et al, 2012cMu et al, , 2017. Based on detailed comparisons of 13 trees generated from analyses of trimming gaps at different levels and coding them for phylogenetic studies (Figs.…”

“…Total DNA was extracted from leaves preserved in silica gel using a plant genomic DNA kit (Tiangen Biotech Co. Ltd., Beijing, China), each polymerase chain reaction amplification was performed in a volume of 20 μL, amplified sequences were sequenced by Ruibiotech Co. Ltd. (Beijing, China), and raw sequence fragments were assembled using Sequencher v.4.1.4 (Gene-Codes Corporation, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA). Detailed information about DNA extraction, primer information, settings for polymerase chain reaction, and raw sequence assemblage followed the methods of Mu et al (2012cMu et al ( , 2017. In this study, assembled sequences were aligned by MAFFT (Katoh et al, 2019).…”

Effect of Celastrus orbiculatus in inhibiting Helicobacter pylori induced inflammatory response by regulating epithelial mesenchymal transition and targeting miR-21/PDCD4 signaling pathway in gastric epithelial cells

“…COE is the product isolated from the stem of Celastrus orbiculatus , a Chinese traditional herb [20]. In a pervious study we identified COE as a novel antibacterial agent with anti- H. pylori activity in vivo [10].…”