Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 May;7(1):62.
doi: 10.1007/s13205-017-0679-8. Epub 2017 Apr 25.

Species evolution and quality evaluation of four Coptis herbal medicinal materials in Southwest China

Hanting Chen  1 , Gang Fan  1 , Yang He  2
Affiliations

Species evolution and quality evaluation of four Coptis herbal medicinal materials in Southwest China

Hanting Chen et al. 3 Biotech. 2017 May.

Abstract

Coptis herbs, which are important herbal medicinal materials, are the dried rhizomes of various plants. In China's herbal market, drying herbs can severely influence morphological markers such as shape, color, and odor, which make consumers difficult to precisely identify the herbs and effectively evaluate the quality. Here, we present the phylogenetic analysis of four Coptis herbal medicinal materials based on internal transcribed spacer sequences. C. chinensis, C. omeiensis, C. deltoidea and C. teeta constituted a monophyletic group. In this group, C. omeiensis and C. deltoidea cluster together, and they form the sister group with C. teeta, and C. chinensis locate the outermost of C. omeiensis, C. deltoidea and C. teeta. At the same time, the HPLC-DAD method was applied to simultaneously analyze main alkaloids from seventeen different samples. On the basis of the robust phylogenetic topology, the parsimony reconstructions of six effective medicinal constituents were implemented to elucidate the evolutionary history in Coptis herbs, and thus evaluate the herbal quality. The results showed that C. chinensis had been considered to be the best herb, not only the high content in single constituent but also in total alkaloids. In addition, all the samples from seventeen habitats were considered as qualified herbs, and they could meet the requirements of national quality standards for Coptis herbs in China.

Keywords: Alkaloid; Coptis herbs; Evolution; Herbal quality; Internal transcribed spacer (ITS).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Sampling of the four Coptis species. Map showing the sampling sites of the here included specimens
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Bayesian inference tree derived from the part of ITS genes. Numbers above the lines or besides the nodes are Bayesian posterior probabilities and maximum likelihood analyses (1000 replicates)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Parsimony reconstruction of six selected effective components (Jatrorrhizine, Columbamine, Epiberberine, Coptisine, Palmatine, Berberine). The topology of phylogenetic tree was used from the result of Bayesian inference
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Akaike H (1973) Information theory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle. In: Petrov BN, Csaki F (eds) Second international symposium on information theory. Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, pp 267–281
    1. Chen J, Zhao H, Wang X, Lee FSC, Yang H, Zheng L. Analysis of major alkaloids in Rhizoma coptidis by capillary electrophoresis-electrospray-time of flight mass spectrometry with different background electrolytes. Electrophoresis. 2008;29:2135–2147. doi: 10.1002/elps.200700797. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Darriba D, Taboada GL, Doallo R, Posada D. jModelTest 2: more models, new heuristics and parallel computing. Nat Methods. 2012;9:772. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.2109. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Doyle JJ, Doyle JL. A rapid DNA isolation procedure for small quantities of fresh leaf tissue. Phytochem Bull. 1987;19:11–15.
    1. He Y, Hou P, Fan G, Arain S, Peng C. Comprehensive analyses of molecular phylogeny and main alkaloids for Coptis (Ranunculaceae) species identification. Biochem Syst Ecol. 2014;56:88–94. doi: 10.1016/j.bse.2014.05.002. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources