Jujube Fruit Metabolomics Study

We are very pleased to share the recent jujube fruit metabolomics study published in Plants Journal (this is an Open Access publication). The authors of “Jujube Fruit Metabolomic Profiles Reveal Cultivar Differences and Function as Cultivar Fingerprints” utilized Metware’s proprietary Widely-Targeted Metabolomics for Plants, and reported 1315 detected compounds. The study has been performed at our Boston (MA, USA) location. The goals of the study were to examine the global metabolite profiles of mature fruits derived from different jujube cultivars at three cultivar trial sites in New Mexico and evaluate the cultivar-specific effects on jujube metabolome.

Jujube is a nutritious fruit, and it is high in vitamin C, fiber, phenolics, flavonoids, nucleotides, and organic acids. In addition, jujube is the source of many natural products with medicinal potential and application in herbal medicine. 11 jujube cultivars were analyzed in this study.

In total, 1315 metabolites were detected in the 62 jujube fruit samples, with amino acids and derivatives (20.15%, 265 metabolites) and flavonoids (15.44%, 203 metabolites) as the two dominant groups. Phenolic acids, alkaloids, terpenoids, and nucleotides and their derivatives accounted for 12.85% (169 metabolites), 9.35% (123 metabolites), 6.54% (86 metabolites), and 5.17% (68 metabolites), respectively. Among the detected metabolites, natural products (secondary metabolites) represented 48.1% (632 metabolites) of the samples.

A large diversity of specialized metabolites was detected in jujube fruits, including medicinal natural products. An example of a medicinal natural product class from Ziziphus plants is cyclopeptide alkaloids, a structurally diverse group of cyclic peptides biosynthesized through the ribosomal pathway by copper-dependent BURP peptide cy-clases and from predicted split precursor peptides co-localized on the Ziziphus genome to hypothetical peptide cyclase genes. In the analyzed mature fruit metabolomes, we identified an analyte matching MS and tandem MS data literature values corresponding to sanjoinine A, a sedative cyclopeptide alkaloid from Ziziphus spinosa which has been characterized as a bioactive compound from jujube herbal medicine used to treat insomnia. Our analysis showed that the putative sanjoinine A analyte was only detected in higher abundance in Jinsi and JKW cultivars, in low abundance in Li and KFC cultivars, and it was not detectable in all other cultivars.

The authors determined major metabolic differences among 11 jujube cultivars grown at three growth sites in New Mexico, United States. Their study showed that metabolomic analysis of mature jujube fruits revealed metabolic profiles as cultivar-specific fingerprints, which can support the selection of cultivars based on nutrient and natural product contents for agricultural and medicinal purposes.

If you work with plants and interested in running metabolomics or lipidomics study with plants samples, we offer:

-          Widely-Targeted Metabolomics for Plants (we have >30,000 plant metabolites in our in-house database)

-          Quantitative Lipidomics for Plants (a panel with 2,500 lipid metabolites)

-          Flavonoids Metabolomics (>3,700 flavonoids for plants research)

-          Targeted Anthocyanin Assay

-          Targeted Plant Hormone Assay

Have some questions? – We are here to help!