[Biological ingredient analysis of traditional Chinese medicines utilizing metagenomic approach based on...

The quality of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) has been mainly evaluated based on chemical ingredients, yet recently more attentions have been paid on biological ingredients, especially for pill-based preparations. It is a key approach to establish a fast, accurate and systematic method of biological ingredient analysis for realization of modernization, industrialization and internationalization of TCMs. The biological ingredient analysis of TCM preparations could be abstracted as the identification of multiple species from a biological mixture. The metagenomic approach based on high-throughput-sequencing (HTS) and big-data-mining has been considered as one of the most effective methods for multiple species analysis of a biological mixture, which would also be helpful for the analysis of biological ingredients in TCMs. Simultaneous identification of diverse species, including the prescribed species, adulterants, toxic species, protected species and even the biological impurities introduced through production process, could be achieved by selecting appropriate DNA biomarkers, as well as applying large-scale sequence comparison and data mining. By this approach, it is prospective to offer an evaluation basis for the effectiveness, safety and legality of TCM preparations.