Five 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones including a new one, (5S,6R,7S,8R)-5,8-dichloro-6,7-dihydroxy-2-phenylethyl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-4H-chromen-4-one (1), and four known ones (2–5), were isolated from 150 mM NaCl-elicited Aquilaria sinensis cell suspension cultures. In addition, three feruloyl amides (6–8), six nucleosides (9–14), (+)-syringaresinol (15), indole-3-carboxaldehyde (16), and two glycosides (17–18) were also obtained. The structures were unambiguously identified by analysis of their UV, IR, NMR, and HRESIMS data. The absolute configuration of the new 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromone (1) was established by a dimolybdenum tetraacetate-induced circular dichroism experiment. Compared to un-elicited cell lines, the appearance of 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones in NaCl-treated cells occurred on the 3rd and 5th days of their treatment. 2-(2-Phenylethyl)chromones, feruloyl amides, nucleosides, and lignins have been reported to be closely related to plant defense; therefore, the identification of these compounds from NaCl-elicited A. sinensis cell suspension cultures would be useful for further exploring the mechanism of agarwood formation.

Three new heteropentacene derivatives based on bis(benzothieno)silole were synthesized. The XRD characterization reveals that the crystal structures of the heteropentacenes can be significantly influenced by the methyl substitution. The optical and electrochemical properties were investigated and the experimental results confirm that the silole motif lowers the LUMO level of the heteropentacenes. Preliminary results show that the insertion of silole ring systems into rigid heteropentacenes leads to an improved solubility and high fluorescence quantum yield up to 0.74 in solution, which indicates the potential of these new silole-containing compounds for photonic and photoelectric applications. The strong and sensitive fluorescence quenching behavior towards picric acid (PA) demonstrates that the silole-containing heteropentacene derivatives are also promising fluorescent sensor materials for detecting the nitro-containing explosives.

It is usually a tedious task to profile the chemical composition of a given herbal medicine (HM) using high performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) due to the time-consuming sample preparation and laborious post-acquisition data processing procedures. Even worse, some labile compounds may face degradation risks when exposed to organic solvents for a relatively long period. As one of the most popular HMs, the promising therapeutic benefits of Epimedii Herba (Chinese name: Yinyanghuo) are well defined; however, the chemical profile, and in particular those flavonoids that have been claimed to be responsible for the efficacy, remains largely unknown. Attempts are devoted here to achieve direct LC–MS measurement and efficient post-acquisition data processing, and chemome comparison among three original sources of Epimedii Herba, such as Epimedium sagittatum (Esa), E. pubescens (Epu), and E. koreanum (Eko) was employed to illustrate the strategy utility. A home-made online liquid extraction (OLE) module was introduced at the front of the analytical column to comprehensively transfer the compounds from raw materials onto the LC–MS instrument. A mass defect filtering approach was programmed to efficiently mine the massive LC–MS dataset after which a miniature database was built involving all chemical information of flavonoids from the genus Epimedium to draw a pentagonal frame to rapidly capture potential quasi-molecular ions (mainly [M–H]⁻). A total of 99 flavonoids (66 in Esa, 84 in Eko, and 66 in Epu) were captured, and structurally annotated by summarizing the mass fragmentation pathways from the mass spectrometric data of authentic compounds and an in-house data library as well. Noteworthily, neutral loss of 144 Da was firstly assigned to the neutral cleavage of rhamnosyl residues. Significant species-differences didn’t occur among their chemical patterns. The current study proposed a robust strategy enabling rapid chemical profiling of, but not limited to, HMs.

An attempt was made to characterize the pharmacokinetic profiles of Qishen Keli (QSKL) that has been widely proved to be effective in clinical practice. A method using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) for the simultaneous determination of 25 analytes in rat plasma was developed and validated. Satisfactory chromatographic separation was achieved on an ACQUITY UPLC HSS T3 column with gradient elution using mobile phase consisting of 0.02% aqueous formic acid (A) and acetonitrile fortified with 0.02% formic acid (B), and analyte detection was carried out using polarity-switching multiple reaction monitoring mode. Method validation assays in terms of selectivity, linearity, inter- and intra-day variations, matrix effect, and recovery demonstrated the newly developed method to be specific, sensitive, accurate, and precise. Following the oral administration of QSKL at a single dose, the qualified method was successfully applied for pharmacokinetic investigations in sham and model rats. Mild differences occurred for the pharmacokinetic patterns of most components between those two groups, whereas significant differences were observed for glycyrrhizic acid and glycyrrhetic acid. The obtained findings could provide meaningful information for the clarification of the effective material basis of QSKL.

Background: Chemical profile provides the pronounced evidence for herbal medicine (HM) authentication; however, the chemome is extremely sophisticated. Fortunately, two-dimensional (2D) code, as a quick response means, is conceptually able to store abundant information, exactly fulfilling the chemical information storage demands of HMs.Methods: We here attempted to denote both MS $$^1$$1 and MS $$^2$$2 dataset of HM with a single 2D-code chart. Measurement ofGanoderma lucidumthat is one of the most famous HMs with LC–MS/MS was employed to illustrate the “coding-decoding” workflow for the conversion amongst MS/MS dataset, 2D-code, and chemical profile, and to evaluate the applicability as well. After data acquisition, andm/zvalue of each deprotonated molecular signal was divided into integer and decimal portions, corresponding toxandycoordinates of 2D-plot, respectively. On the other side,m/zvalues of all its fragment ions were exactly assigned to serialxvalues sharing an identicalyvalue being equal to the precursor ion. 2D-code was thereafter produced by plotting these defined dots at a 2D-chart. Regarding a given 2D-code map, the entire chart (xcoordinate: 0–600;ycoordinate: 0–600) was fragmented into two regions by the line of y=x. MS $$^1$$1 spectral signals always located below the line, whereas all fragment ions lay at the left zone. After extracting information from the edges of each square frame,m/zvalues of both precursor ion and fragment ions could be harvested and putatively deciphered to a compound through applying some empirical mass fragmentation rules.Results: The entire code ofGanoderma lucidumfruit bodies therefore corresponded exactly to a compound set. The elution program, even the employment of direct infusion, couldn’t significantly impact the code, and dramatical differences occurred between different species and amongst different parts ofGanoderma lucidumas well. Not only ganoderic acid cluster but also certain primary metabolites served as the diagnostic compounds towards species differentiation.Conclusion: 2D-code might be a meaningful, practical visual way for rapid HM recognition because it is convenient to achieve the conversion amongst MS/MS dataset, 2D-barcode plot, and the chemome.