Abstract
Among the medicinal plants, neem has its own value in terms of treating many known and unknown diseases. Neem plant is known to contain several thousands of secondary metabolites, which are crucial for multifunctional properties like anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, antimalarial, and anticarcinogenic activities. Now it is important to understand the molecular details like exact quantity of the neem metabolites in different parts of the plants. Here we have showed a UHPLC-MS/SRM method to quantify five neem metabolites (Azadirachtin, Nimbin, Salanin, Azadiradione, Epoxy/Hydroxy-azadiradione) from different parts of neem plants (leaf, bark, and seed). Among the five metabolites analyzed, E/H-Azadi is present in very high concentration in neem plant (leaf: 124,239 pg/µg, bark: 906.97 pg/µg, seed: 7309.48 pg/µg) as compared to other metabolites. Interestingly, E/H-Azadi seems to be the most abundant metabolite in the neem leaf and bark extracts and azadi is the highest in the seed extract. In the leaf extract, E/H-Azadi is ~136 fold higher compared to bark and ~17 fold higher compared to seed extract. The amount of E/H-Azadi in leaf is 124,239 pg/µg of leaf extract, which constitutes ~10% in the leaf extract. The excess amount of E/H-Azadi in the neem leaf might be one of the reasons for its multifunctional properties in nature.
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Abbreviations
- Aza:
-
Azadirachitin
- Azadi:
-
Azadiradione
- CID:
-
Collision-induced dissociation
- E/H-Azadi:
-
Epoxy or hydroxyazadiradione
- SRM:
-
Selected reaction monitoring
- UHPLC-MS/SRM:
-
Ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry/selected reaction monitoring
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Department of Biotechnology, India for the financial assistance to setup the Metabolomics Facility at C-CAMP, NCBS Campus.
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Rangiah, K., Gowda, M. (2019). Method to Quantify Plant Secondary Metabolites: Quantification of Neem Metabolites from Leaf, Bark, and Seed Extracts as an Example. In: Gowda, M., Sheetal, A., Kole, C. (eds) The Neem Genome. Compendium of Plant Genomes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16122-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16122-4_3
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