Phytoecdysteroids of the East Asian Caryophyllaceae.

BACKGROUND: Occurrence of integristerone A (1), 20-hydroxyecdysone (2), ecdysone (3), 2-deoxy-20-hydroxyecdysone (4) has been analyzed in 64 species of the East Asian Caryophyllaceae.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ecdysteroid content was determinate by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). HPLC with a high-resolution mass spectrometry was performed on Shimadzu LCMS-IT-TOF (Japan) system equipped with a LC-20A Prominence liquid chromatograph, a photodiode array detector SPD-M20A and ion-trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometer.

RESULTS: New sources of phytoecdysteroids: Melandrium sachalinense and Melandrium firmum have been revealed. It is the 1(st) time that two has been identified in M. sachalinense and M. firmum; 1 in the species: Lychnis fulgens, Silene repens, Silene foliosa, Silene stenophylla, Silene jenisseensis and M. sachalinense; 3 in Lychnis cognata; 4 in L. fulgens, S. stenophylla and S. jenisseensis (the tribe Lychnideae, the subfamily Caryophylloideae). Ecdysteroid-negative taxa are Spergularia rubra of the tribe Sperguleae; species of the genera Minuartia, Honckenya, Eremogone, Arenaria, Moehringia, Pseudostellaria, Fimbripetalum, Stellaria and Cerastium of the tribe Alsineae; Scleranthus annuus of the tribe Sclerantheae, as well as the East Asian representatives of the genera Gypsophila, Psammophiliela, Dianthus and Saponaria of the tribe Diantheae; Oberna and Agrostemma of the tribe Lychnideae.

CONCLUSION: This investigation shows the most promising sources of ecdysteriods are species of genera Silene and Lychnis.