title: Rapid Identification and Verification of Indirubin-Containing Medicinal Plants.
abstract: Indirubin, one of the key components of medicinal plants including Isatis tinctoria, Polygonum tinctorium, and Strobilanthes cusia, possesses great medicinal efficacy in the treatment of chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML). Due to misidentification and similar name, materials containing indirubin and their close relatives frequently fall prey to adulteration. In this study, we selected an internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) for distinguishing these indirubin-containing species from five of their usual adulterants, after assessing identification efficiency of matK, rbcL, psbA-trnH, and ITS2 among these species. The results of genetic distances and neighbor-joining (NJ) phylogenetic tree indicated that ITS2 region is a powerful DNA barcode to accurately identify these indirubin-containing species and discriminate them from their adulterants. Additionally, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to verify indirubin in different organs of the above species. The results showed that indirubin had been detected in the leaves of Is. tinctoria, P. tinctorium, S. cusia, and Indigo Naturalis (made from their mixture), but not in their roots, or in the leaves of their adulterants. Therefore, this study provides a novel and rapid method to identify and verify indirubin-containing medicinal plants for effective natural treatment of CML.
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China ; Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China ; Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China ; Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China.
authors.forename: Peipei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Yuhua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China ; Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Licheng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Haibo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China ; Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Shilin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Huangjiahu West Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430065, China.
authors.forename: Xiuqiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang