Structural-fingerprinting of polysaccharides to discern Panax species by means of gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.

In this paper, a sequential gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry route was proposed for characterization of polysaccharides in Panax ginseng (PG), P. notoginseng (PN), and P. quinquefolius (PQ). Due to the reflection of stepped structure parameters, the resulting integrative profiles were tentatively defined as structural-fingerprinting of polysaccharides (SFP) with monosaccharide compositional fingerprinting (MCF), Smith degradation and non-degradation fingerprinting (SDF and SNF), and oligosaccharide compositional fingerprinting (OCF). The MCF, OCF and SDF did not allow for visual discrimination of the three species due to the high interspecific similarity of PG and PQ, whereas SNF could intuitively distinguish PG, PN, and PQ by the presence or absence of Rha and the peak area ratio of Glc/Gal. Similarity analysis, heatmap analysis and principal component analysis were further performed to discern three Panax species based on SNF data sets. The linear →4)-Hexp-(1 → structures were clearly identified as the common structural backbones in side chains or smooth regions of the main chain in PPG, PPN, and PPQ using HILIC-UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS for characterization of partial acid hydrolyzates. The experimental results displayed that the established SFP approach possesses high comprehensibility as well as satisfactory generalization capability for analysis of plant polysaccharides.