Metabolomic and antioxidant analyses of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge and Salvia prattii Hemsl. seeds

Abstract

Salvia miltiorrhiza and Salvia prattii seeds are rich in metabolites that are beneficial to human health and can be utilised as nutritional supplements. In this study, UPLC-MS and GC-MS based on extensively focused metabolomics were used to compare the seed metabolomics of the two species. LC-MS detected 118 metabolites, primarily Lipids and phenylpropanoids. GC- MS detected a total of 188 metabolites, mainly organic acids and their derivatives, of which Salvia prattii seeds contain high levels of nutrients. In addition, we experimentally determined antioxidant activity of two Salvia species, and the results showed that the antioxidant activity of Salvia prattii seeds was about twice as high as that of Salvia miltiorrhiza seeds. We used WGCNA to group the metabolites, and found the central metabolites in the focal modules including flavonoids and terpenoids. Our study contributes valuable knowledge for future research on the chemical makeup of Salvia prattii seeds.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Salvia prattii
• Salvia miltiorrhiza
• seeds
• metabolites
• WGCNA
• antioxidant activity

Author contributions

The experiments were conceived and organised by Dongfeng Yang and Yunkun Wei. Yuting Xia, Yanbo Huang and Zhuoni Hou performed the experiments. Lan Zhang, Xinyu Hong and Ganggui Lou performed the bioinformatics analysis. Yuting Xia, Dongfeng Yang and Yunkun Wei contributed to the data analysis. The paper was written by Yuting Xia and Dongfeng Yang. Ann Abozeid reviewed, edited and visualised the manuscript. All authors discussed and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Key Scientific and Technological Grant of Zhejiang for Breeding New Agricultural Varieties (No.2021C02074), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LR21H280002), Key project of the Central Government: Capacity Building of sustainable Utilisation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Resources (2060302) and National Natural Science Foundation of China for State Key Laboratory (81973415, 31800255).