AUTHOR=Cai Qingzhu , Song Qiang , Jiang Kunxia , Lin Yao , Zhang Ying , Zhang Jirong , Lin Shuqing , Huang Lina , Xue Qihuang , Huang Zehao , Xu Wen , Xu Wei , Yam Mun Fei 

TITLE=Quality evaluation of compounds in leaves of six Taxus species based on UPLC-MS/MS and chemometrics

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2023.1193188

DOI=10.3389/fchem.2023.1193188

ISSN=2296-2646

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Introduction:</bold><italic>Taxus</italic> species are used as medicinal plants all over the world. The leaves of <italic>Taxus</italic> species are sustainable medicinal resources that are rich in taxoids and flavonoids. However, traditional identification methods cannot effectively identify <italic>Taxus</italic> species on the basis of leaces used as raw medicinal materials, because their appearance and morphological characteristics are almost the same, and the probability of error identification increases in accordance with the subjective consciousness of the experimenter. Moreover, although the leaves of different <italic>Taxus</italic> species have been widely used, their chemical components are similar and lack systematic comparative research. Such a situation is challenging for quality assessment.</p><p><bold>Materials and methods:</bold> In this study, ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry combined with chemometrics was applied for the simultaneous determination of eight taxoids, four flavanols, five flavonols, two dihydroflavones, and five biflavones in the leaves of six <italic>Taxus</italic> species, namely, <italic>T. mairei</italic>, <italic>T. chinensis</italic>, <italic>T. yunnanensis</italic>, <italic>T. wallichiana</italic>, <italic>T. cuspidata</italic>, and <italic>T. media</italic>. Chemometric methods, including hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis, orthogonal partial least squares-discriminate analysis, random forest iterative modeling, and fisher linear discriminant analysis, were utilized to differentiate and evaluate the six <italic>Taxus</italic> species.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> This proposed method exhibited good linearity (<italic>R</italic><sup>2</sup> = 0.9999–0.9972) with a lower quantification limits of 0.94–3.05 ng/mL for all analytes. The intra- and inter-day precisions were within 6.83%. Six compounds, namely, 7-xylosyl-10-deacetyltaxol, ginkgetin, rutin, aromadendrin, 10-deacetyl baccatin III, and epigallocatechin, were identified through chemometrics for the first time. These compounds can be used as important chemical markers to distinguish the above six <italic>Taxus</italic> species rapidly.</p><p><bold>Conclusion:</bold> This study established a method for determination of the leaves of six <italic>Taxus</italic> species, and revealing the differences in the chemical components of these six <italic>Taxus</italic> species.</p>