Phytochemistry and Secondary Metabolites

In AuRIns, we develop modern methodologies in phytochemistry studies. Plants from selected families are studied for the isolation of new compounds through the application of modern approaches to the isolation of plant secondary metabolites without generation of artefacts. These include extensive usage of HPLC, LC-MS, CPC, and others.

We are interested in developing dereplication strategies for rapid identification of closely related compounds in complex mixtures. The compounds of interest are identified directly from a crude mixture by introducing the plant crude extract into the LC-MSn system on Orbitrap platform. The fragmentation patterns are compared with those of anticipated pure compounds previously recorded and stored in a database. Efforts are on developing a highly automated platform. The massive development in equipment and software for data collection and analyses had led to rapid progress, with NMR and MS being the most important metabolomic platforms with wide applications in chemical, biological, pharmaceutical and medical sciences. We develop and validate sets of procedures for fast identification of plant species based on mass spectrometric data. This requires an on-line hyphenation of HPLC and MS to record mass data of all plant extracts and chemometric application for data analyses. This analysis will highlight the correlations between plant species regardless of their geographical origin, surrounding vegetation, altitude and/or other parameter(s).

We develop and validate sets of procedures for fast identification of plant species based on mass spectrometric data. This requires an on-line hyphenation of HPLC and MS to record mass data of all plant extracts and chemometric application for data analyses. This analysis will highlight the correlations between plant species regardless of their geographical origin, surrounding vegetation, altitude and/or other parameter(s).

Herbal authentication is very important to ensure the identity of the herbs. Often herbs possess similar botanical features, and herbal authentication must be assisted with microscopic analysis as well as chemical marker analysis. Here in AuRIns, we analyze the chemical markers of local herbs using cutting edge technologies to authenticate herbs for industries and research purposes. In addition, herbal analysis including quantitation and validation of chemical markers is available at our research centres.