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• Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) were changed in Polygonatum cyrtonema rhizome process. • FOS increased following by a decrease over P. cyrtonema repeated steam-sun drying. • Four cycles of steam-heated air drying was found to be an optimal processing. • Heated air or infrared drying was not suitable to replace the traditional process. The rhizome of Polygonatum cyrtonema (Polygonati Rhizoma) is widely consumed as medicine-homology-food in Asia for its tonic effect, which can be enhanced by traditional steam-sun drying for nine cycles. However, the multi-constituents variation in this process was unclear, and the necessity of nine cycles should be further discussed. In this study, the multiple constituents, including saccharides, amino acids, nucleosides and bases, lipids, saponins, homoisoflavones and cinnamamides, in P. cyrtonema treated with sun drying, heated air drying, each cycle of steam-heated air drying, infrared drying and microwave drying were compared. The results showed that the content of total saccharides increased in samples from one to four cycles of steam-heated air drying (365.0–945.6 mg/g) and decreased from four to nine (945.6–288.0 mg/g). The content of fructose increased in samples from one to six cycles (29.9–234.7 mg/g) and decreased from six to nine (234.7–177.7 mg/g). The abundance of most phospholipids and free fatty acids increased continuously from one to nine cycles while most of the amino acids, nucleosides and bases showed continuous declining trend. Principal component analysis showed that the samples treated with one to four cycles were wider in distance than four to nine, indicating the chemical composition tending to be stable after fourth steaming. If taking total saccharides, fructose, and phospholipids as the major quality indicator, four cycles of steam-heated air drying processing should be the ideal postharvest processing method to obtain better taste, flavor and functionality. Samples treated with heated-air drying and infrared drying were far in distance from steaming ones by hierarchical cluster analysis, which means these processing methods were not suitable to replace the traditional steam-sun drying process. Collectively, the above results will not only provide novel processing methods that will obtain the high active ingredients for P. cyrtonema , but also shed light on the optimization of processing technology for the industrial production of medicinal crops which need nine cycles of steam-sun drying processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Label-free peptidomics approach was developed for discovering peptide biomarkers. • Four peptide biomarkers were discovered, which all contained glycosylated lysine sites. • These glycosites containing peptides could distinguish gelatins from deer horn or hide. Gelatin and gelatin-based derivatives have been attracting worldwide attention as health-food ingredients. Deer horn gelatin (DCG), a well-known and expensive gelatin food in Asia, has suffered adulterants by adding deer-hide gelatin (DHG) in it. However, robust and effective methods which could differentiate DCG from DHG are still unavailable. This study is committed to discover peptide biomarkers to distinguish DCG from DHG using label-free peptidomics by nanoLC-MS/MS. Multivariate statistical analysis combined with glycosylation sites analysis of peptides was applied to visualize the difference between DCG and DHG. As a result, four peptide biomarkers for distinguishing DCG and DHG were confirmed and validated by UPLC-MS/MS and MRM mode, which was also used to calculate adulteration percentage in commercial samples. The presented strategy may be also particularly helpful in the in-depth authentication of food gelatins from different tissues of the same species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The root of Angelica sinensis is known throughout Asia for its traditional efficacy in invigorating and promoting blood circulation. The wild germplasm resources of A. sinensis was in short supply, and most of the commercial medicinal materials come from cultivation. To obtain the differences in the transcriptional levels of wild and cultivated of A. sinensis, the full-length transcriptome of A. sinensis was analyzed using PacBio SMRT three-generation high-throughput sequencing technology. Using the high-throughput sequencing platform Illumina HiSeq X Ten PE150, a root transcriptome dataset of wild and cultivated A.sinensis was obtained. The transcriptome sequencing analyses obtained 16.5 Gb database in wild and cultivated A.sinensis, after assembly steps, we obtain 113 906 transcript sequences(insfroms) with an average length of 1 466 nt. BLAST analysis indicated that 109 113(accounting for 95.79% of the total insfroms), 93 276(81.89%),60 638(53.24%),48 928(42.95%),42 876(37.64%)isofroms were successfully annotated in the NR, Swiss-port, GO, KO and KOG databases, respectively. The annotation information can be classified into three categories of biological processes, cellular components and molecular functions of GO classification, involving 128 KEGG standard metabolic pathways. Analysis of 25 463 differential insfroms, 15 090 higher expression in wild A. sinensis, and 10 373 higher in cultivated A. sinensis. In the enrichment analysis of GO and KEGG, differential insfroms were concentrated on the pathway of plant-pathogen interaction, MAPK signaling pathway-plant and plant hormone signal transduction. In this study, high-throughput sequencing was used to obtain the full-length transcription information of A. sinensis, and the overall characteristics of A. sinensis genetic information were clarified. By comparing the differential expression of wild and cultivated A. sinensis at the genetic level, it provides basic information for further screening and breeding of A. sinensis germplasm resources, resistance research and secondary metabolic pathway analysis.