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. 2023 Feb 9;12(4):775.
doi: 10.3390/plants12040775.

Metabolomic Analysis Reveals the Metabolic Diversity of Wild and Cultivated Stellaria Radix (Stellaria dichotoma L. var. lanceolata Bge.)

Zhenkai Li  1 , Hong Wang  1 , Lu Feng  1 , Haishan Li  1 , Yanqing Li  1 , Gege Tian  1 , Pilian Niu  1 , Yan Yang  1 , Li Peng  1   2
Affiliations

Metabolomic Analysis Reveals the Metabolic Diversity of Wild and Cultivated Stellaria Radix (Stellaria dichotoma L. var. lanceolata Bge.)

Zhenkai Li et al. Plants (Basel). .

Abstract

Stellaria Radix, called Yinchaihu in Chinese, is a traditional Chinese medicine, which is obtained from the dried roots of Stellaria dichotoma L. var. lanceolata Bge. Cultivated yinchaihu (YCH) has become a main source of production to alleviate the shortage of wild plant resources, but it is not clear whether the metabolites of YCH change with the mode of production. In this study, the contents of methanol extracts, total sterols and total flavonoids in wild and cultivated YCH are compared. The metabolites were analyzed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The content of methanol extracts of the wild and cultivated YCH all exceeded the standard content of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. However, the contents of total sterols and total flavonoids in the wild YCH were significantly higher than those in the cultivated YCH. In total, 1586 metabolites were identified by mass spectrometry, and 97 were significantly different between the wild and cultivated sources, including β-sitosterol, quercetin derivatives as well as many newly discovered potential active components, such as trigonelline, arctiin and loganic acid. The results confirm that there is a rich diversity of metabolites in the wild and cultivated YCH, and provide a useful theoretical guidance for the evaluation of quality in the production of YCH.

Keywords: Stellaria dichotoma L. var. lanceolata Bge.; cultivation; medicinal plants; metabolic diversity; metabolomic; wild.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Characteristics and metabolite contents of the wild and cultivated YCH. (A–C) Overall characteristics of Wild (wild), Cultivated I and Cultivated II (cultivated), roots, respectively. (D)The content of methanol extract, total sterols and total flavonoids of Wild, Cultivated I and Cultivated II, the lowercase letters in the figure indicate the significant difference between the samples (p < 0.05), the same letter represents no significant difference, and different letters represent significant difference.
Figure 2
Figure 2
PCA score plot of YCH from different sources. (A) Pos mode; (B) neg mode.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Cluster heatmap analysis of metabolites from different sources of YCH. (A) The metabolites detected in the positive ion mode. (B) The metabolites detected in the negative ion mode.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Volcano diagram of differential metabolites from different sources of YCH. (A,B) The differential metabolites of Wild and Cultivated I detected in the positive and negative ion modes, respectively. (C,D) The differential metabolites of Wild and Cultivated II detected in the positive and negative ion modes, respectively. The plots are of log probability vs. fold change, with color coding for different categories of significant differences.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis of different origins of YCH. (A,B) The score plots of Wild and Cultivated I in the positive and negative ion modes, respectively, with Q2 of 0.997 and 0.998, respectively. (C,D) The score plots of Wild and Cultivated II in the cation and anion modes, respectively, with Q2 of 0.997 and 0.998, respectively.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Classes of significantly different metabolites in different sources of YCH. (A,B) The fold-change histograms of significantly different metabolites between Wild and Cultivated I in the positive and negative ion mode, respectively. (C,D) The fold-change histograms of significantly different metabolites between Wild and Cultivated II in the cation and anion modes, respectively.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Venn diagram of the number of metabolites with significant differences between the different sources of YCH.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Cluster heat map of significantly different metabolites from different sources of YCH. Metabolites marked in the green box are potential characteristic metabolites of Wild; metabolites marked in the yellow box are potential characteristic metabolites of Cultivated I and Cultivated II.
Figure 9
Figure 9
KEGG pathway analysis: enrichment of metabolites with a significant difference between Wild, Cultivated I and Cultivated II.
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