Metabolite Profiling Of Radix Astragali (Astragalus Spp.)

Radix Astragali (Astragalus spp.) has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for over2000years, and still widely used in other countries. According to the latest edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia2010, Radix Astragali is prepared from the dried roots of Astragalus mongholicus or A. membranaceus. During the last several years, we have witnessed a steady expansion in the number of publications made associated with this herb. They focused on phytochemistry, pharmacology, metabolomics, taxonomy and genealogy of Radix Astragali. However, the varieties and other infraspecific taxa of the Astragalus are in need of further study.'Flora of China', a book considered to be the authoritative scripture in the systematic botanical publications, regards Astragalus mongholicus and A. membranaceus as the same species. In the present research, we developed a metabolomic method to study the classification of four species of Astragalus.Metabolomics, an emerging subject of the'Systems Biology', adopts a 'top-down'strategy to reflect the function of organisms from terminal symptoms of metabolic network and understand metabolic changes of a complete system caused by interventions in holistic context.The metabolite profiling of Radix Astragali including:ethnobotanical study of Austragalus from different populations; HPLC-ESI-TOF/MS have been used to identify or tentatively identify15compounds in Radix Astragali; 11marker compounds useful in the assessment of4species of Austrgalus were identified using multivariate principle component analysis. And the result suggest that the variability in the amount of chemical constituents in different species of Radix Astragali may play an important role in their differentation. The average content of marker compounds in4species of Austrgalus is:A. mongholicus> A. borealimonghlicus> A. membranaceus> A. sp.(L). The use of metabolic profiling to distinguish Austrgalus from different species broader implications in the identification of markers to help the classification of other important medicinal plants.Based on our research results, we suggest that Astragalus mongholicus and Astragalus membranaceus should be separated into two species, while A. boreslimongholic was regarded as a suspicious taxa and needed further study.Our work is, critical in defining strategies and actions for genetic diversity conservation, wild resource reversion, domestication and introduction of the endangered medical plant, Radix Astragali.