Chemical Fingerprinting of Turnera diffusa and Closely Related Genera by High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography

Turnera diffusa Willd. Ex Schult. is a small shrub that belongs to the family Turneraceae. It grows in both tropical and subtropical parts of America and goes by the common name damiana¹. The ancient Mayans used this plant for the treatment of giddiness and loss of balance [2]. Previously, our group reported the isolation of 35 compounds from damiana [3–5]. In this study we outline a high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) method established for the rapid determination of six marker standards within a methanolic extract of T. diffusa. The method combines the separation and comparison study of the analytes on silica gel 60F254 HPTLC plates using ethyl acetate: acetic acid: water (95: 5: 0.5, v/v/v), as the mobile phase. The plates were scanned densitometrically at λ = 254 nm. The method was used for determination and comparison of six compounds from T. diffusa and other related genera. Comparison TLC profiles of T. diffusa with related genera and six marker standards. 1) T. apharodis 2) T. difusa 3) T. altrifolia 4) Tetraphyllin B 5) Turneradiffusin 6) β-Arbutin 7) Terniflorin 8) Echinaticin 9) Turneradin 10) Mixture of six standards 11) T. diffusa (Mexico) 12) T. apharodisiau. Acknowledgements: The work was supported by Center of Research Excellence in Natural Products Neuroscience (CORE-NPN) NIH/NCRR grant number P20RR021929. References: [1] Lowry TP (1944) J. Psychoactive Drugs 16: 267–268. [2] Martinez M (1984) Las Plants Medicinales de Mexico; Ediciones Botas: Mexico, p.116–119. [3] Tyler VE (1983) Pharm. History 25: 55–60. [4] Piacente S, et al. (2002) J. Biosci. 57: 983–985. [5] Zhao J, et al. (2007) J. Nat. Prod. 70: 289–292.