中藥材之分子鑒定   全文下載

Molecular Authentication of Chinese Herbal Materials

在傳統中藥治療疾病的幾千年歷史中，準確地鑒定中藥的來源、正確區分正品、代用品和偽品是必要的前提之一。傳統中藥的鑒定主要是透過形態學和組織學方法，但是中藥的代用品和偽品通常與正品有相似的形態和組織結構，所以單一的傳統方法使中藥鑒定工作受到一定的侷限。中藥化學成分也曾經被研究作為標記鑒定中藥，但是中藥中的許多化合物受生長環境、生長年限、收穫期、儲存期等影響，變化很大。因此，發展一個有效、準確和穩定的技術以鑒定中藥材來源是必需的。近年來，隨著分子生物學的發展，DNA操作技術已被接受用為中草草的鑒定。工乏些技術包括分子標記、特定基因的測序和雜交技術的使用，例如DNA微列陣等。本文中，除了討論目前分子生物學在中藥品質控制中的發展，我們也將概述在這個領域中已廣為應用的分子技術。

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been playing a major role in health care in China for millennia. Accurate authentication is always necessary to prevent the target herbs from intentional and inadvertent adulteration with other plant species. Morphological and histological authentication is now commonly practiced but they are not precise enough to authenticate those herbs which are possibly substituted or adulterated by plants with similar shapes and tissue constructs. Ordinary chemical authentication was also introduced to TCM but it is often not reliable enough to produce easy-to-interpret results. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a more effective, accurate, reliable and sensitive technology for the authentication of herbs. DNA manipulation techniques developed for molecular biotechnology have been adapted to the authentication of herbs in recent years. These techniques comprise of the molecular markers, sequencing of specific genes, and sophisticated hybridization setups such as DNA microarrays. Underside, we review the development of current techniques for authentication. In addition, we also describe the use of molecular markers in authentication of the most studied Chinese herbs.