Metabolomics study on the toxicity of Polyacetylenes

Polyacetylenes are widely present in food and herbs, while these compounds have specific neurotoxicity, and even cause death. The toxicity study of these compounds is still inadequate. Target site of toxicity is not clear, and the mechanisms of toxicity are poorly understood. In order to clarify the neurotoxicity of these compounds, we selected bupleurotoxin isolated from B. longiradiatum as a neurotoxicity-inducing compound. 17 toxicity biomarkers were identified using global metabolomics, 4 of them were then verified by targeted metabolomics. Bioinformatics analysis using the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) software found a strong correlation between the GABA receptor and these metabolites. A validation test using a rat hippocampal neuron cell line was designed to confirm that founding and the results confirmed that BETX inhibited GABA-induced currents ( I GABA ) in a competitive manner. In summary, our study illustrated the molecular mechanism of the toxicity of polyacetylenes. Fig. 1 Acknowledgements : The work was supported by NSFC (81230090), and in part by Global Research Network for Medicinal Plants (GRNMP). References: [1] Zhang ZX, Lu C, et al. (2014) J. Proteome Res, 13 (2), pp 925 – 933.