Abeliophyllum distichum, (Oleaceae), is the only member of its species and genus and is found only on the
Korean Peninsula. Studies have been rarely reported on its metabolites and activities,
to date. Five variants of this plant have been reported and were classified based
only on morphological characteristics like the colour of the petals/sepals or the
shapes of the fruit. There are many opinions on the taxonomic identities of this plant,
and some documents even suggest that each variant had the same taxa. Accordingly,
phytochemical investigations and chemical maps for the variants should be valuable.
In this study, metabolomics was applied to estimate the dissimilarities in the chemical
compositions of the variants of its flowers to understand the dissimilarities of the
morphological characteristics. As a result, twenty-nine metabolites including four
new metabolites were isolated from A. distichum flowers. NMR, UHPLC-TripleTOF-ESI-MSMS and GC/MS based metabolomic studies were performed
to understand chemical differentiation among the five variants and 35 metabolites,
43 secondary metabolites and 108 hydrophobic primary metabolites were identified,
respectively. Primary and secondary metabolites showed different patterns among all
variants based on morphological characteristics. Also, the metabolic flux analysis
of five variants was confirmed through correlation analyses of the primary and secondary
metabolites. Their metabolic flux was revealed, and we reconstructed metabolic pathways
based on dissimilarities in morphological characteristics in the five variants of
A. distichum flowers.
