Mass spectrometry-based ginsenoside profiling: Recent applications, limitations, and perspectives

초록

Ginseng, the roots of Panax species, is an important medicinal herb used as a tonic. As ginsenosides are keybioactive components of ginseng, holistic chemical profiling of them has provided many insights into understandingginseng. Mass spectrometry has been a major methodology for profiling, which has been applied torealize numerous goals in ginseng research, such as the discrimination of different species, geographical origins,and ages, and the monitoring of processing and biotransformation. This review summarizes the various applicationsof ginsenoside profiling in ginseng research over the last three decades that have contributed toexpanding our understanding of ginseng. However, we also note that most of the studies overlooked a crucialfactor that influences the levels of ginsenosides: genetic variation. To highlight the effects of genetic variation onthe chemical contents, we present our results of untargeted and targeted ginsenoside profiling of different genotypescultivated under identical conditions, in addition to data regarding genome-level genetic diversity. Additionally, we analyze the other limitations of previous studies, such as imperfect variable control, deficientmetadata, and lack of additional effort to validate causation. We conclude that the values of ginsenoside profilingstudies can be enhanced by overcoming such limitations, as well as by integrating with other -omics techniques.

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