Comparative genetic and chemical profiling performed on Alstonia scholaris in China and its implications to standardization of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Validity of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is oppugned very often because of the bugs of quality, effectiveness, and repeatability. Standardization of TCMs is one way to make a change. How to realize standardization of TCMs and with what measures to shape the quality control system, is provoking much debate in the TCM field. Genetic and chemical profiling were comparatively performed on Alstonia scholaris in China through amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis and alkaloid high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) scanning, aiming to evaluate the attributes of chemical and DNA fingerprinting as applicable tools for quality control of TCMs and explore theoretic strategy of TCM standardization. Each individual of A. schlolaris displayed a unique AFLP or HPLC profile, indicating well individual-distinguishing ability of the two techniques. Patterns of variance structure disclosed by the HPLC and AFLP profiling were similar, and more than 50% of alkaloid loci were kept constant across any single population, suggesting a genetic basis of the alkaloid secondary metabolism in the plant and justifying DNA fingerprinting as a qualified identifier for quality control of the TCM. Compared to the alkaloid HPLC scanning, the AFLP analysis produced much more loci with lower polymorphic loci percentage, suggesting that AFLP can be more statistically informative and with moderate sensitivity. In passing, a strategy pursuing genetically identical TCMs by popularizing plantation of selected germplasm of medicinal plants was suggested for TCM standardization. Key words: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), standardization, Alstonia scholaris, alkaloid scanning, genetic profiling.