China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica, the 1st in the field of TCM, is supervised by China Association for Science and Technology and sponsored by Institute of Chinese Pharmaceutical Association. The journal is China's earliest comprehensive core journal of traditional Chinese medicine, and always maintains the circulation top in the professional areas. The journal publishes the latest research and progress of traditional Chinese medicine and takes a leading position in numbers of articles published, downloads and citations among all journals in this discipline.
Its scope covers new achievements, technologies, methods, experiences and concepts resulting from the research on Chinese materia medica pursuant to Chinese medical and pharmaceutical theories, traditional experiences, and modern science and technology, including medicinal resources and identification, cultivation, processing, preparation, chemistry, pharmacology, theory of Chinese pharmacy and clinical practice, bencaological study.
The journal is included in CA, JST and CSCD.
Honorary Editor-in-Chief Xiao Peigen Editor-in-Chief Wang Yongyan
Associate Editors Zhang Boli, Hu Zhibi, Yao Xinsheng, Li Lianda, Li Dapeng, Yang Baofeng, Zhou Chaofan, Huang Luqi, Chen Shilin, Li He.
Executive Editorial Board Cai Shaoqing, Chen Shilin
Siraitia grosvenorii, vine plant of Cucurbitaceae family, has been used as natural sweetener and folk medicine. The major components and sweet substances are both known as mogrosides which are cucurbitane-type tetra-triterpenoids. Squalene epoxidase (SQE) has been generally recognized as the common rate-limiting enzyme in triterpenes and phytosterols, catalyzing into their common precursor 2,3-oxidosqualene (OS); however, in the biosynthesis of mogrosides, the precursor was 2,3,22,23-dioxidosqualene (DOS) instead of OS. To explore the specific SQE in
S.grosvenorii, we cloned two full-length
SQEs (
Sg SQE1,
Sg SQE2), performed bioinformatic analysis, analyzed the expression patterns in different periods of fruits by Real-time PCR, and induced the prokaryotic expressions. Finally, the interactive sites between SQE and substrate were predicted by docking, which would provide evidence for
SQE gene function study of mogrosides and also lay foundation for triterpene biosynthesis in other plants.
Sg SQE1 and
Sg SQE2 both encoded predicted proteins of 524 amino acids, and shared 84% identity to each other at residues level, but had high specificity at N-terminal region. They both accumulated in fruits, but with different patterns,
Sg SQE1 increased rapidly and reached the highest level at 15 d, which had identical co-expression pattern with cucurbitadienol synthase (CS).
Sg SQE2 had a relatively constant level.The docking results showed that predicted proteins of
Sg SQE1 and
Sg SQE2 can interact with OS, with different contact sites (R348 for Sg SQE1, H349 for Sg SQE2). The recombinant proteins had no activities by prokaryotic expression, which were caused by transmembrane regions.However, all the results strongly suggested that Sg SQEs were both involved in secondary metabolites biosynthesis in
S. grosvenorii. Sg SQE1 might be involved in mogrosides biosynthesis and Sg SQE2 might participate in other cucurbitane-type triterpenes or phytosterols biosynthesis.
Dihydrochelerythrine was isolated from the ethanol extract of
Corydalis yanhusuo by chromatographic and recrystallization techniques. To our knowledge, this is the first report that dihydrochelerythrine was found to be unstable. The NMR, HPLC, and LC-MS were applied to monitor the structural conversion process of dihydrochelerythrine. The results showed that when dissolved in polar deuteration solvent (e.g., DMSO-
d6 and MeOD), dihydrochelerythrine is directly converted to chelerythrine gradually. However, if a non-polar solvent (e.g., CD
2Cl
2) was used, the sample of dihydrochelerythrine undergoes the formation of pseudobase, chelerythrine, and bimolecular ether then followed by oxidation to oxychelerythrine as the major final product. The reason leading to this phenomenon may be that the C-6 in dihydrochelerythrine is highly reactive to nucleophiles, and is easily converted to different derivatives in different solvents attributed to the solvent effect. This finding will contribute to the extraction and isolation, bioactivity screening, and quality evaluation of medicinal materials containing dihydrochelerythrine and other similar derivatives.
Malaria is an infectious disease affecting humans especially for children in tropical Africa. Previous studies have shown that artemisinin and its derivatives could selectively kill erythrocytic stage of malaria parasite and have a greater impact on the ring stage. In recent years, there have been new findings of its mechanism. However, the concentrations of artemisinin and its derivatives used in these studies can reach 50 to 80 times the half-inhibitory concentration
in vitro. In this study, the international standard strain 3D7 of
Plasmodium falciparum was cultured
in vitro. After the strain was treated with half-inhibitory concentration of dihydroartemisinin (DHA), the morphological changes of intraerythrocytic
P. falciparum were observed, and then the 3D7 life cycle and effects of DHA on this strain at different developmental stages were explored. The 3D7 strain of
P. falciparum was continuously synchronised for more than three times, and DHA at half maximal inhibitory concentration (10 nmol·L
−1) was administered for 6 h after the last synchronization, and three life cycles were continuously observed (132 h). The results showed that compared with the parasites untreated by DHA, there was a noticeable delay in the life cycle of at least 36 h, indicating that the growth of 3D7 was significantly inhibited by DHA (
P < 0.001), and the rate of ring formation was significantly reduced (
P < 0.05). The trophozoites were abnormal in shape, such as shrink in size, and the number of merozoites in schizonts was significantly decreased (
P < 0.05). These results suggest that non-killing (meaning parasites can be inhibited but not killed) concentration of DHA can significantly inhibit the growth of
P. falciparum, which may not only affect the ring stage, but also have an impact on other stages of
P. falciparum.
Near infrared spectroscopy combined with chemometrics methods was used to distinguish
Ganoderma lucidum samples collected from different origins, and a prediction model was established for rapid determine polysaccharides contents in these samples. The classification accuracy for training dataset was 96.87%, while for independent dataset was 93.33%; as for the prediction model, 5-fold cross-validation was used to optimize the parameters, and different signal processing methods were also optimized to improve the prediction ability of the model. The best square of correlation coefficients for training dataset was 0.965 4, and 0.851 6 for validation dataset; while the root-mean-square deviation values for training dataset and validation dataset were 0.018 5 and 0.023 6, respectively. These results showed that combining near infrared spectroscopy with suitable chemometrics approaches could accuracy distinguish different origins of
G.lucidum samples; the established prediction model could preciously predict polysaccharides contents, the proposed method can help determine the activity compounds and quality evaluation of
G. lucidum.
To study the difference and similarities in pharmaceutical characterization and pharmacodynamic characterization between the single decoction and merger decoction of White Tiger Decoction Plus Cinnamon Twig. The same technology parameters were used to prepare single decoticon and merger decoction extracts of White Tiger Decoction Plus Cinnamon Twig, and then the difference and similarities in pharmaceutical characterization were analyzed based on their HPLC fingerprint, content of index components, and the extraction content. The pharmacodynamic difference and similarities were analyzed by inflammatory model and pain model. There was no significant difference in HPLC chromatographic peak, but the peak area value reflected the difference of quantity to some extent. It was found that the peak value of single Rhizoma Anemarrhenae and Ramulus Cinnamomi decoction was less than the peak of their merger decoction, but the peak value of single stir-fried Radix Glycyrrhizae with liquid adjuvant decoction was greater than the peak of merger decoction. The contents of neomangiferin, mangiferin and timosaponin BⅡ among index components as well as extraction content in merger decoction were higher than those in single decoction. The content of liquiritin and glycyrrhizic acid as well as extraction content in merger decoction was lower than those in single decoction. There was no significant difference in the content of cinnamic acid and its extraction content between merger decoction and single decoction. According to the efficacy experiment, both of them showed significant anti-inflammatory and analgesic effect. However, the merger decoction showed faster anti-inflammatory effect, and longer analgesic effect. It can be concluded that the merger decoction and single decoction of White Tiger Decoction Plus Cinnamon Twig have the same material basis, and the merger decoction is better for the dissolution of the active ingredients in this recipe, and is more beneficial to the therapeutic effect.
By means of various chromatographic methods such as Sephadex LH-20, ODS, and semi-preparative HPLC, ten compounds were isolated from
Streptomyces sp. A1693 and their structures were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic data and physicochemical methods, including five butenolides, two diketopiperazines, and three antimycin antibiotics. The structures were identified as (5
S) -5- (11-hydroxymethyloctyl) furan-2 (5
H) -one (1), (5
S) -5- (11-hydroxy-11-methylheptyl) furan-2 (5
H) -one (2), (5
S) -5- (11-methyl-12-oxooctyl) furan-2 (5
H) -one (3), (5
S) -5- (11-hydroxy-11-methyloctyl) furan-2 (5
H) -one (4), (5
S) -5- (11-hydroxy-12-methyloctyl) furan-2 (5
H) -one (5), cyclo-Phe-Val (6), cyclo-Phe-Ile (7), uranchimycin A (8), uranchimycin B (9), and deisovalerylblastomycin (10). Among them, compound 1 was defined as a new one. All the compounds didn’t show the cytotoxic activity against A549 cell line (IC
50 > 50 mg·L
-1).
