LC-MS-based Metabolomics of Medicinal Plants

In the advent of herbal medicine and estimation of metabolomic pattern from the complex matrix of phytoconstituents is critically needed for the quality and regulatory purpose of medicinal plants. However, several techniques, such as LC-MS, GC-MS, NMR-MS, and so on, are associated to illustrate the metabolic pattern of medicinal plants, qualitatively and quantitatively. Besides, LC-MS is one of the growing and highly advanced techniques used for metabolomic analysis due to its high specificity, selectivity and precise and accuracy in an overall assessment of data selectivity and integrity. The study deals with the role of LC-MS in metabolomic steps to reduce the associated problems such as experimental design, selection of method, sample preparation and method optimization, which majorly affect the results of choice. Foremost, the application of LC-MS in the quantitative assessment of targeted or untargeted plant metabolites has been summarized with an assessment of notable steps used in the study. The current scenario of analytical research based on LC-MS and its associated methods is highly associated in plant metabolomics studies which not only reveal the qualitative and quantitative information but also emphasize the regulatory aspects of individuals or varieties of medicinal plants. Moreover, many chemometric techniques provide a prospect for excavating essential chemical information from the original set of chromatographic or spectroscopic data. Besides, principal component analysis (PCA) is the most commonly used technique to evaluate the wide dimensionality of data sets for their authenticity, efficacy and consistency.