TY - JOUR A2 - Wang, Yi-tao AU - Hu, Zhigang AU - Tu, Yuan AU - Xia, Ye AU - Cheng, Peipei AU - Sun, Wei AU - Shi, Yuhua AU - Guo, Licheng AU - He, Haibo AU - Xiong, Chao AU - Chen, Shilin AU - Zhang, Xiuqiao PY - 2015 DA - 2015/05/18 TI - Rapid Identification and Verification of Indirubin-Containing Medicinal Plants SP - 484670 VL - 2015 AB - Indirubin, one of the key components of medicinal plants including Isatis tinctoria, Polygonum tinctorium, and Strobilanthes cusia, possesses great medicinal efficacy in the treatment of chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML). Due to misidentification and similar name, materials containing indirubin and their close relatives frequently fall prey to adulteration. In this study, we selected an internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) for distinguishing these indirubin-containing species from five of their usual adulterants, after assessing identification efficiency of matK, rbcL, psbA-trnH, and ITS2 among these species. The results of genetic distances and neighbor-joining (NJ) phylogenetic tree indicated that ITS2 region is a powerful DNA barcode to accurately identify these indirubin-containing species and discriminate them from their adulterants. Additionally, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to verify indirubin in different organs of the above species. The results showed that indirubin had been detected in the leaves of Is. tinctoria, P. tinctorium, S. cusia, and Indigo Naturalis (made from their mixture), but not in their roots, or in the leaves of their adulterants. Therefore, this study provides a novel and rapid method to identify and verify indirubin-containing medicinal plants for effective natural treatment of CML. SN - 1741-427X UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/484670 DO - 10.1155/2015/484670 JF - Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -