Phytochemistry and Neurological Activity of Ceremonial Smokes Collected from the Native Okanagan Species Artemisia Tridentata Nutt.

We hypothesized that plants smoked or burned during ceremonies and rituals contain neurologically active phytochemicals. The objective of our research was 1) to identify species most frequently used in ceremonies and rituals as reported in Moerman's Ethnobotanical Database, 2) to discover and quantify known neurologically active phytochemicals in these species, 3) to discover new phytochemicals in the species by untargeted metabolomics and 4) to determine potential neurological activity of plant extracts in an anti-acetylcholinesterase bioassay. Moerman's online ethnobotanical database holds a repository of data for 3618 species and consists of 47,000 entries describing uses of North American flora by 291 indigenous groups. This database was queried for 263 families. Overall, 23 families, 43 genera, and 60 species were reported to be smoked or burned for ritual purposes by Native American/First Nations peoples. Residual and Binomial analysis revealed that members of the genus Artemisia L. are significantly used more frequently (p-value< 0.05) as incense, smoke, or fumigant. Phytochemical analysis of Artemisia tridentata Nutt. revealed the presence of neurotransmitters acetylcholine, gamma-aminobutyric acid, serotonin, and melatonin in leaf extracts of culture grown tissues. The inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (100 mU) was observed and significantly differed between methanol, oil, and smoke extracts from field collected tissues. Metabolomic analysis using Principal Component Analysis revealed significant variability between smoke, culture-grown and field extracts. Overall, these data support our hypotheses, and suggest that members of the genus Artemisia L. are good candidates for the discovery of neurologically active compounds.