Metabolomic approach for discrimination of processed ginseng genus (Panax ginseng and Panax quinquefolius) using UPLC-QTOF MS

Abstract

Discriminating between two herbal medicines (Panax ginseng and Panax quinquefolius), with similar chemical and physical properties but different therapeutic effects, is a very serious and difficult problem. Differentiation between two processed ginseng genera is even more difficult because the characteristics of their appearance are very similar. An ultraperformance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF MS)-based metabolomic technique was applied for the metabolite profiling of 40 processed P. ginseng and processed P. quinquefolius. Currently known biomarkers such as ginsenoside Rf and F11 have been used for the analysis using the UPLC-photodiode array detector. However, this method was not able to fully discriminate between the two processed ginseng genera. Thus, an optimized UPLC-QTOF-based metabolic profiling method was adapted for the analysis and evaluation of two processed ginseng genera. As a result, all known biomarkers were identified by the proposed metabolomics, and additional potential biomarkers were extracted from the huge amounts of global analysis data. Therefore, it is expected that such metabolomics techniques would be widely applied to the ginseng research field.

Keywords: Panax ginseng; Panax quinquefolius; UPLC-QTOF MS; discrimination; metabolomics.

Fig. 1

Representative UPLC chromatogram of (A) processed Panax ginseng and (B) processed Panax quinquefolius. NG-R1; 1, G-Rg1; 2, G-Re; 3, G-Rf; 4, 20(S)-G-Rh1; 5, 20(S)-G-Rg2; 6, 20(R)-G-Rg2; 7, G-Ro; 8, G-Rb1; 9, G-Rc; 10, G-Ra1; 11, G-Rb2; 12, G-Rb3; 13, G-Rd; 14, G-Rg6; 15, G-Rk3; 16, G-F4; 17, G-Rh4; 18, G-F2; 19, 20(S)-G-Rg3; 20, 20(R)-G-Rg3; 21, G-Rk1; 22, G-Rg5; and 23. UPLC, ultraperformance liquid chromatography.

Fig. 2

Representative total ion chromatogram (TIC) of ginseng samples. (A) Processed Panax ginseng; (B) processed Panax quinquefolius.

Fig. 3

PCA/score plot of processed Panax ginseng and processed Panax quinquefolius samples using Pareto scaling with mean centering. PCA, principal component analysis; ■, processed P. ginseng (KG); ▲, processed P. quinquefolius (AG).

Fig. 4

(A) OPLS-DA/S-plot and (B) selected ion intensity trend plots of processed Panax ginseng (■, KG) and processed Panax quinquefolius (▲, AG) samples. a (t_R 16.74 min, m/z 945.5520), b (t_R 11.08 min, m/z 799.4848), c (t_R 16.74 min, m/z 991.5507), d (t_R 6.12 min, m/z 945.5508), e (t_R 6.12 min, m/z 991.5513), f (t_R 11.08 min, m/z 845.4691), g (t_R 15.64 min, m/z 1077.5826), h (t_R 10.83 min, m/z 799.4848), i (t_R 5.92 min, m/z 845.4995), j (t_R 4.61 min, m/z 961.5509), k (t_R 15.64 min, m/z 1123.6045), and l (t_R 14.90 min, m/z 1077.5825). OPLS-DA, orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis.