Against the backdrop of rising multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDR AB) threats, this study explores the in vitro antibacterial activity and mechanism of Senecio scandens (a Miao ethnic medicinal herb) crude extract. Using 10 clinical MDR AB strains, we reassessed antibiotic sensitivity and then applied microbroth dilution to determine MIC/MBC, time-kill curves for bactericidal kinetics, and SEM/TEM for structural changes. Proteomics identified downregulated proteins, cross-referenced with VFDB/CARD to target membrane-related proteins (msbA, lptD), while molecular docking validated the strong binding of linarin/hyperoside to these targets. qPCR confirmed lptD/msbA mRNA downregulation (p < 0.05) by linarin/hyperoside (MIC = 312.5 μmol/L). The extract showed concentration-dependent bactericidal effects (MIC = 640 μg/mL), disrupting cell wall/membrane integrity. This study first reveals that linarin and hyperoside inhibit MDR AB by downregulating lptD/msbA, compromising outer membrane integrity, offering novel therapeutic candidates.

Ziziphi Spinosae Semen (ZSS) is a traditional Chinese medicinal material used for both medicinal and dietary purposes, but substitution and adulteration can compromise its authenticity and quality. Ten batches of authentic ZSS and one source batch of each of five adulterant materials were used to prepare 325 laboratory samples. This study aimed to develop a rapid method for ZSS identification and adulteration quantification using Fourier transform near-infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIR). Spectral distributions of six sample classes were analyzed using PCA-X, PLS-DA, and OPLS-DA, and the classification performance of SVM, DA, ANN, and KNN was compared. DD-SIMCA was used for one-class authentication, while PLSR was applied to quantify five adulterants using 15 spectral processing approaches. In the internal test set, SVM achieved 98.0% accuracy and 98.4% balanced accuracy. Within the laboratory samples studied, DD-SIMCA achieved 100% accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Across the five selected PLSR models, prediction-set R² ranged from 0.9272 to 0.9940 and RMSEP from 1.36 to 4.33 percentage points of adulterant mass fraction. These results demonstrate the feasibility of combining FT-NIR with chemometric methods for rapid ZSS classification, authenticity assessment, and adulteration-level prediction. Independent validation with additional source batches is required before practical application.