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Author
Argemí Gil, Anna
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Abstract
Saponins are glycosides that are found in a wide variety of plants in different concentrations, which can make up 3% of the weight of the plant and are well known as foaming agents. They are a family of compounds (mixture of compounds) of natural products that present different structures with a wide range of polarities and biological activities. Each plant contains different ones, and therefore this is where the analytical difficulty is found.
The interest of the study of saponins in plants goes to the fact that these can present biological activities that are problematic for human health, so this united with the little research carried out, due to the number of plants that must be investigated, causes that there is interest in continuing the research.
In this work a method has been adjusted for the characterization of saponins in different medicinal plants acquired in a local florist (Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), Calendula (Calendula officinalis), and Aloe Vera (Aloe Vera) since saponins are generally present in the roots, leaves and seeds of plants.
For this, an Escin standard is used, which is a mixture of saponins, and a ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography method is fitted with it, coupled to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (QqQ) with an ESI electrospray ionization mode (positive and negative). UPLC-ESI-MS/MS to be able to quantify its different major components. From the adjusted method, the samples are treated to obtain an extract and the saponins present in the different plants under study are searched for by UHPLC-ESI-QTOF. In addition, the linearity and differential sensitivity in the two available detectors, QqQ and QTOF, have been compared.
Thus, this work achieves a chromatographic and acquisition method by UPLC to characterize the Escin standard and identify the saponins of plants by QTOF mass spectrometry.
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