Highly selective and sensitive determination of free and total amino acids inApocynum venetumL. (Luobuma tea) by a developed HPLC–FLD method coupled with pre-column fluorescent labelling

Quality Evaluation of Apocyni Veneti Folium from Different Habitats and Commercial Herbs Based on Simultaneous Determination of Multiple Bioactive Constituents Combined with Multivariate Statistical Analysis

Apocyni Veneti Folium (AVF) is a kind of staple traditional Chinese medicine with vast clinical consumption because of its positive effects. However, due to the habitats and adulterants, its quality is uneven. To control the quality of this medicinal herb, in this study, the quality of AVF was evaluated based on simultaneous determination of multiple bioactive constituents combined with multivariate statistical analysis. A reliable method based on ultra-fast liquid chromatography tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UFLC-QTRAP-MS/MS) was developed for the simultaneous determination of a total of 43 constituents, including 15 flavonoids, 6 organic acids, 13 amino acids, and 9 nucleosides in 41 Luobumaye samples from different habitats and commercial herbs. Furthermore, according to the contents of these 43 constituents, principal component analysis (PCA) was employed to classify and distinguish between AVF and its adulterants, leaves of Poacynum hendersonii (PHF), and gray relational analysis (GRA) was performed to evaluate the quality of the samples. The proposed method was successfully applied to the comprehensive quality evaluation of AVF, and all results demonstrated that the quality of AVF was higher than the PHF. This study will provide comprehensive information necessary for the quality control of AVF.

Preparation of molecularly imprinted polymers using theanine as dummy template and its application as SPE sorbent for the determination of eighteen amino acids in tobacco

In this paper, a novel dummy template molecularly imprinted polymer (DMIP) based on a vinyl-SiO2 microspheres surface for the simultaneous selective recognition and enrichment of 18 amino acids was prepared via a surface molecular imprinting technique using theanine as a dummy template. Compared to the imprinted polymers prepared using traditional polymerization techniques, the obtained DMIPs exhibited a regular spherical shape and were relatively monodisperse. The maximal sorption capacity (Qmax) of the resulting DMIPs for the 18 amino acids was up to 1444.3 mg g(-1). A kinetic binding study showed that the sorption capacity reached 85.40% of Qmax in 25 min and sorption equilibrium at 30 min. The imprint factors of the sorbents ranged from 2.86 to 6.9 for the 18 amino acids, which indicated that the DMIP sorbents have high selectivity. An HPLC-UV method for the simultaneous determination of 18 amino acids in tobacco and tobacco smoke was developed using the DMIPs as sorbents for solid phase extraction (SPE) in the sample pretreatment procedure. Under the optimum experimental conditions, the materials had enrichment factors of up to 200 for the amino acids, and the recoveries of the 18 amino acids in tobacco smoke were in the range from 79% to 104% with relative standard deviations of less than 7.4%. It indicated that the obtained DMIP sorbents could specifically recognize the amino acids from complicated samples.