Simultaneous Determination and Quantification of Triterpene Saponins from Camellia sinensis Seeds Using UPLC-PDA-QTOF-MS/MS

Abstract

Saponins in the Camellia sinensis seeds have a broad spectrum of biological properties and application potentials. However, up to now, no chromatographic methods have been developed to provide full fingerprinting and quality assurance for these saponins. This research aimed to develop a novel method to tentatively identify and quantify saponins in C. sinensis seeds by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with photo-diode array detector and quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-PDA-QTOF-MS/MS), and compare it with the classic vanillin-sulfuric acid assay. Fifty-one triterpene saponins, including six potentially new compounds, were simultaneously detected by UPLC-PDA-MS/MS, and their chemical structures were speculated according to the retention behavior and fragmentation pattern. The total saponin content in the crude extract and the purified saponin fraction of C. sinensis seeds were quantified to be 19.57 ± 0.05% (wt %) and 41.68 ± 0.09% (wt %) respectively by UPLC-PDA at 210 nm, while the corresponding values were determined to be 43.11 ± 3.17% (wt %) and 56.60 ± 5.79% (wt %) respectively by the vanillin-sulfuric acid assay. The developed UPLC-PDA -MS/MS method could determine specified saponins, and is more reliable for quantifying the C. sinensis seed saponins than the classic spectrophotometric method. It is of great significance for the future investigations and applications of these saponins.

Mass spectrometry as a tool for the dereplication of saponins from Ampelozizyphus amazonicus Ducke bark and wood

“…Identification of triterpene saponins by UHPLC‐UV‐MS/MS with CID in negative ion mode is a well‐established and widely employed technique 25,26,41 . Once known compounds are identified in the data set, database searches can be used as a guidance to discover the structure of new metabolites with modified core structures from a given class.…”

“…In this work we used MZmine 2 , which contains methods for all data processing stages, such as spectral filtering, peak detection, alignment, normalisation and identification 21 . Recent literature reports this tool for the structural determination of compounds from several metabolite classes such as flavonoids, 19,22 alkaloids, 17,23,24 and saponins 25,26 …”

Identification of lipophilic components in Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium cultivars by supercritical CO2 fluid extraction with ultra‐high‐performance liquid chromatography–Q Exactive Orbitrap tandem mass spectrometry

“…For example, compound 13 exhibited a [M+H] + peak at m/z 153.0544 and characteristic fragment ions in the MS 2 spectrum at m/z 125.0595 [M+H‐CO] + , 111.0439 [M+H‐CO‐CH 2 ] + , and 93.0338 [M+H‐C 2 H 4 O 2 ] + . According to previous research [35], compound 13 was identified as vanillin, whose fragmentation pattern is shown in Figure 4h. Notably, compounds 1, 12, 17, 23, and 49 were not reported previously in CRP extracts.…”

Theasaponin E1 Inhibits Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer Cells through Activating Apoptosis and Suppressing Angiogenesis

“…Cells were maintained in RPMI-1640 medium (Sigma, St. Louis, MO, USA) containing 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) at 37 °C with 5% CO 2 . TSE1 was prepared and identified as reported in our previous work [ 74 ].…”