High performance thin layer chromatography hyphenated with electrospray mass spectrometry for evaluation of nucleobases in two traditional Chinese medicinal mushrooms: A metabolomic approach

Present paper describes the application of a recently developed method for the determination of six nucleobases (thymine, uracil, adenine, cytosine, guanine and guanosine), by high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) in Ganoderma lucidum (GL) and Cordyceps sinensis (CS) - two mushrooms that have been widely revered in traditional Chinese medicines. The method used a simple mobile phase constituted of dicholoromethane-methanol-formic acid (8:2.25:0.8, v/v/v). Validation of the method according to USP guidelines proved the method to be accurate (97.1–99.9%) and precise (1.8–5.2% RSD). Results confirmed the abundance of nucleobases in various extracts of GL and CS wherein the aqueous extracts of GL and ethanolic extracts of CS were found to have the maximum nucleobase content. Identification of nucleobases in the samples was reconfirmed by hyphenated HPTLC-MS technique. HPTLC data were further processed by chemometric tools like heat maps, cluster dendrograms and principal component analysis for drawing relatability patterns among the samples. Since both GL and CS are well known for their therapeutic applications, nucleobase profiling in these medicinal mushrooms will provide an essential lead in establishing their use in the development of drug formulations.