Planta Med 2014; 80 - P1M21
DOI: 10.1055/s-0034-1394588

Chemotaxonomicaly aimed metabolomics of Lychnophorinae

ME Poleti Martucci 1, B Loeuille 2, JR Pirani 2, L Gobbo-Neto 1
  • 1University of São Paulo, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto, Av. do Café s/n° 14040 – 903, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil
  • 2University of São Paulo, Institute of Biosciences, Department of Botany, Rua do Matão, 277, 05508 – 090, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

The subtribe Lychnophorinae in the family Asteraceae occurs mostly in the Cerrado domain of the Brazilian Central Plateau. The relationships among its currently recognized genera, as well as the relationships between Lychnophorinae and other subtribes belonging to Vernonieae tribe have been recently elucidated by a molecular and morphological based phylogeny approach. The purpose of the present study was to compare non-targeted metabolomics data of selected Lychnophorinae species with this phylogeny in order to assess the congruence between metabolomics and phylogenetic data, as well as its potential for phylogenetic reconstruction and taxonomic classification within the Lychnophorinae subtribe [1]. We analyzed 80 species belonging to Albertinia, Anteremanthus, Blanchetia, Chronopappus, Eremanthus, Gorceixia, Heterocoma, Hololepis, Lychnophora, Lychnophoriopsis, Minasia, Paralychnophora, Piptolepis, Prestelia and Proteopsis genera by GC-MS and UHPLC-UV(DAD)-MS(ESI-Orbitrap. Dried powdered leaves of each species were extracted with CH2Cl2 for GC-MS analysis, and with MeOH:H2O 7:3 for UHPLC-UV-MS analysis. The non-targeted metabolic fingerprints obtained were treated with MetAlignTM, and the matrices generated were processed in SIMCA for hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). Results show that metabolomics data are congruent with the phylogeny in several aspects. It was observed that segregations of species based on HCA of their metabolic fingerprints were in agreement with phylogenetic data. Therefore, our results suggest that metabolomics approaches could be used for chemotaxonomic studies of the Lychnophorinae subtribe and could assist in establishing a phylogenetic classification.

Keywords: Lychnophorinae, metabolomics, LC-MS, multivariate analysis

References:

[1] Martucci MEP, De vos RC, Carollo CA, Gobbo-Neto L. Metabolomics as a potential chemotaxonomical tool: application in the genus Vernonia Schreb. Plos One 2014; 9: 1 – 8