Application of next-generation sequencing for the identification of herbal products

Conventional Sanger Sequencing for authentication of herbal products is difficult since they are mixture of herbs with fragmented DNA. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques give massive parallelization of sequencing reaction to generate multiple reads with various read length, thus different components in herbal products with fragmented DNA can be identified. NGS is especially suitable for animal derived products with the lack of effective markers for chemical analysis. Currently, second generation sequencing such as Illumina Sequencing and Ion Torrent Sequencing, and third generation sequencing such as PacBio Sequencing and Nanopore Sequencing are representative NGS platforms. The constructed library is first sequenced to obtain a pool of genomic data, followed by bioinformatics analysis and comparison with DNA database. NGS also facilitates the determination of contaminant which is essential for quality control regulation in Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) factory. In this article, we provide an overview on NGS, summarize the cases on the use of NGS to identify herbal products, discuss the key technological challenges and provide perspectives on future directions for authentication and quality control of herbal products.