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Background: Anemarrhenae rhizoma (AR) is widely used for the treatment of febrile diseases, cough, and diabetes in traditional Chinese medicines. AR mainly contains flavonoids and steroidal saponins, such as neomangiferin, mangiferin, timosaponin BII, timosaponin BIII, and timosaponin AIII, which showed various biological activities. Objective: The main objective of the study is to establish an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) method to determine the concentrations of five bioactive constituents in rats' plasma and various tissues. Materials and Methods: The analytes were separated on a C18reversed-phase column. A triple-quadrupole MS/MS equipped with an electrospray ionization source was used as a detector. The main pharmacokinetic parameters were estimated with Drug and Statistics 2.0 Software Package. Results: Neomangiferin and mangiferin exhibit poor oral absorption and slow clearance from the body. Timosaponin BII and timosaponin BIII could be quickly absorbed into the blood circulation and showed double plasma concentration peaks. Timosaponin AIII exhibited a single peak in the plasma concentration-time plot and pharmacokinetic parameters of timosaponin AIII indicated slower absorption, longer body residence time, and slower elimination than timosaponin BII and timosaponin BIII. The five analytes were widely distributed to most of the tissues. Neomangiferin and mangiferin exhibited the maximum concentration in the lung at 6 h after oral administration, the highest levels of timosaponin BII and timosaponin BIII were also observed in the lung at 1 h after oral administration, and the maximum concentration of timosaponin AIII was observed in the liver. Conclusion: The findings of the present study might be helpful to better understand the pharmacokinetics and distribution of AR bioactive constituents in vivo, which would facilitate the clinical application of AR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The DNA fingerprints of Curcuma wenyujin from various habitats were generated by using SRAP markers to find the feasibility in analyzing their relationship., Methods: The DNA polymorphism of Curcuma wenyujin from various habitats were detected by SRAP molecular markers., Results: We had screened five pairs of primer combinations, and built the DNA fingerprints of Curcuma wenyujin from various habitats. The phylogenetic clustering results revealed that the genetic difference in Curcuma wenyujin from various habitats were little., Conclusion: SRAP markers may offer some evidence for protecting and exploiting of Curcuma wenyuji.

In this study, 14 agronomic traits and 139 SSR loci, distributed on 20 linkage groups of soybean (Glycine max L.) cultivar Suinong 14 and its pedigree were analyzed to explain the genetic diversity and recombination of Suinong 14 and to provide useful information for breeding. The cluster analysis based on SSR makers agreed with the pedigree information. The Shannon-Weaver index of each SSR locus ranged from 0 to 1.677. The average genetic similarity coefficient among cultivars was 0.6380, ranged from 0.538 to 0.799. At least three SSR loci were needed to discriminate Suinong 14 from its pedigree, for example a combination of Satt543, Sat_130 and Satt218. These loci have more alleles. No significant difference was observed between the end portion and the mid-portion within a linkage group, which indicates that the distribution of recombination occurred randomly in each linkage group. No polymorphism was detected within 39 of 139 SSR loci between Suinong 14 and its 8 parents. It implys their importance during cultivar improvement. Satt168, a marker on LGB2, was the only locus transmitted from Zihua 4 to Suinong 14, which indicates that the genetic constitute of Suinong 14 is greatly changed compared with Zihua 4 through five generations of recombination.