Metabolite Profiling of Four Major Flavonoids of Herba Epimdii in Zebrafish

Molecules

Yingjie Wei¹  Ping Li¹  Hongwei Fan¹  E Sun¹  Changmei Wang¹  Luan Shu¹  Wei Liu¹  Xiaolu Xue¹  Qian Qian¹ 

[1] ¹Key Laboratory of New Drug Delivery System of Chinese Materia Medica, Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Chinese Medicine, 100 Shizi Street, Nanjing 210028, China

关键词: zebrafish;    icariin;    baohuoside I;    epimedin A;    epimedin C;    Herba Epimedii;    metabolism;   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules17010420

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The zebrafish model organism was applied first in a metabolic study of icariin, baohuoside I, epimedin A and epimedin C, which are flavonoids in Herba Epimedii. Metabolites of these compounds in zebrafish after exposure for 24 h were identified by HPLC-ESI-MS, whereby the separation was performed with a Zorbax C-18 column using a gradient elution of 0.05% formic acid acetonitrile-0.05% formic acid water. The quasi-molecular ions of compounds were detected in simultaneous negative and positive ionization modes. Metabolic products of icariin and epimedin C via cleavage of glucose residue instead of rhamnose residues were found, which coincided with the results using regular metabolic analysis methods. In addition, the zebrafish model was used to predict the metabolism of the trace component epimedin A, whose metabolic mechanisms haven’t been clearly elucidated with the current metabolism model. The metabolic pathway of epimedin A in zebrafish was similar to those of its homologue icariin and epimedin C. Our study demonstrated that the zebrafish model can successfully imitate the current models in elucidating metabolic pathways of model flavonoids, which has advantages of lower cost, far less amount of compound needed, easy set up and high performance. This novel model can also be applied in quickly predicting the metabolism of Chinese herb components, especially trace compounds.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.