Chemical characterization and comparision of secondary metabolic profile of Conchocarpus fontanesianus (Rutaceae) in two regions of Atlantic Rainforest in São Paulo State

Abstract

The plant kingdom is responsible for a large portion of the chemical diversity recorded in literature and, since the beginnings of civilization, has contributed significantly to the supply of useful substances to humans. It is still an untapped reservoir of new molecules with potential therapeutic interest and only a relative small percentage of the 400,000 known plant species have been studied on a phytochemical or a pharmacological viewpoint. The chemical screening or metabolite profiling is aimed at distinguishing between already known compounds (dereplication) and new molecules directly in crude plant extracts. The potential of chemical screening strategy has been considerably increased by the recent development of hyphenated techniques, which are able to provide efficient separation of the metabolites and valuable structural information at the same time. By coupling HPLC with both mass spectrometry (LC/MS) and UV diode array detection (LC/UV), a large amount of data can be obtained on the constituints of a plant extract before starting any isolation work. Moreover, the recent introduction of the coupling of HPLC with nuclear magnetic resonance (LC/NMR) allows the complete structure of numerous plant metabolites to be elucidated on-line. The Conchocarpus genus, belonging to the Rutaceae family, consists of shrubs or small trees, with 45 species that are distributed from Nicaragua to northern of Bolivia and Brazil. C. fontanesianus, has small tree structure, reaching 1-3 meters tall, is native, endemic and distributed in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, found in regions of Atlantic Rainforest. This project aims to analyze the profile of secondary metabolic of C. fontanesianus through analysis by hyphenated techniques of extracts and fractions of stems and leaves of individuals collected in two regions of the Atlantic Rainforest in São Paulo State. (AU)