Keynote Lecture 12 “NMR chemical profiling medicinal plants with new perspectives: how to do, what to expect and where to apply”

The turn of the century marked a change of paradigm in science: from hypothesis driven experiments to systems biology with observation driven experiments [1]. This change was due to the OMICS technologies that allow a holistic view on organisms under different conditions. In this approach, new hypotheses are generated based on various observed systemic data. Big Data obtained from analytical platforms, with high sensitivity and resolution, are processed and integrated with e.g., physiological data or biological activities. Data mining in databases of genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome may eventually reveal new connections in signaling, metabolic and pharmacologic networks. Genome sequencing of many organisms has been launched. This opens the way to understand a plant’s resistance against pests and disease, quality control of medicinal plants, or finding novel leads for medicines from plants.

NMR- and MS-based techniques are utilized for metabolic profiling. NMR measures mixtures of compounds, MS usually measures separated compounds [2] [3]. Major difference is in quantitation. The intensity of NMR signal is based on molar concentration [4]. In MS based systems, absolute quantitation requires a calibration curve for each compound. Reproducibility of NMR is superior to MS. Our ¹H NMR database of Korean medicinal plants (ca. 250 species) enables searching for features such as synergism, and bioactivity markers for quality control of herbal medicine. In combination with DNA bar coding, metabolic profiling will give us next generation tools for quality control of medicinal plants. Eventually this avoids the need for pharmacological tests to prove and quantify the biological activity.

 

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

• References

• 1 Verpoorte R, Choi YH, Mustafa RN, Kim HK.. Metabolomics: back to basics. Phytochem Rev 2008; 7: 1192-1198
• 2 Verpoorte R, Choi YH, Kim HK.. NMR-based metabolomics at work in phytochemistry. Phytochem Rev 2007; 6: 3-14
• 3 Kim HK, Choi YH, Verpoorte R.. NMR-based plant metabolomics: where do we stand, where do we go?. Trends Biotechnol 2011; 29: 267-275
• 4 Kim HK, Choi YH, Verpoorte R.. NMR-based metabolomic analysis of plants. Nature Protoc 2010; 3: 536-549

Publication History

Article published online:
16 November 2023