Nontargeted Metabolomics as a Screening Tool for Estimating Bioactive Metabolites in the Extracts of 50 Indigenous Korean Plants

Abstract

Many indigenous Korean plants have been used in medicinal preparations and health-promoting foods. These plant species contain beneficial metabolites with various bioactivities, such as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Herein, we suggest a new screening strategy using metabolomics to explore the bioactive compounds in 50 Korean plants. Secondary metabolites were analyzed using UHPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap-MS/MS. The plant extracts were subjected to antioxidant and anti-inflammatory assays. We identified metabolites that contributed to bioactivities according to the results of bioassays and multivariate analyses. Using Pearson’s correlation, phenolics (e.g., casuarictin, 3-O-methylellagic acid) showed positive correlation with antioxidant activity, while biflavonoids (e.g., amentoflavone, rosbustaflavone) were correlated with nitric oxide (NO) inhibition activity. To compensate for the limitation of this new strategy, we further validated these by investigating three parts (branches, fruits, leaves) of Platycladus orientalis which showed high activities on both bioassays. Unlike the above observation, we identified significantly different metabolites from different parts, which was not the results of bioassays. In these validation steps, interestingly, biflavonoids (e.g., robustaflavone, sciadopitysin) contributed to both activities in P. orientalis. The findings of this work suggest that new strategy could be more beneficial in the identification of bioactive plant species as well as that of their corresponding bioactive compounds that impart the bioactivity.

Role of a Mixture of Polyphenol Compounds Released after Blueberry Fermentation in Chemoprevention of Mammary Carcinoma: In Vivo Involvement of miR-145

“…Figure 2 A illustrates the metabolites detected in fermented blueberry juice. The use of discriminant analysis with metabolomics data is a means of identifying potentially bioactive compounds in fermented plant extracts and is complementary to bioassay-guided isolation [ 16 , 17 ]. Therefore, a search was conducted for at least 114 small molecules (mostly secondary metabolites), known in Vaccinium species, by UPLC-QTOF electrospray ionization (positive and negative modes).…”

Valorization of Unconventional Traditional Leafy Vegetable Diversity for Minerals, Health-Promoting Phytochemicals, and Antioxidants

“…There is very little research exploring the metabolomics of traditional and indigenous food sources such as the previously reported studies on certain African traditional fruits and Korean indigenous plants. 107,108 The present research can offer a greater understanding of the metabolomes of these healthpromoting and nutritional TLVs.…”