Utility of the Colorimetric Folin-Ciocalteu and Aluminum Complexation Assays for Quantifying Secondary Metabolite Variation among Wild Sunflowers

Abstract

Abstract Secondary metabolites serve multiple functions in plants, and play a key role in many ecological processes. Accordingly, the quantification of such compounds is central to addressing many questions in plant science. Alongside precision analytical methods like gas and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, there exists a substantial niche for inexpensive and rapid spectrophotometric approaches if their usefulness in a system can be demonstrated. This study seeks to examine the utility of two commonly used colorimetric methods – the Folin-Ciocalteu assay and the aluminum complexation assay – for quantifying variation in leaf phenolic and flavonoid content among members of the genus Helianthus , the sunflowers. Among species known a priori to vary substantially in both the diversity and relative concentrations of secondary metabolites, both assays detect substantial variation among species. Moreover, total phenolic content as assessed by the Folin-Ciocalteu assay correlates positively with concentrations of multiple individual phenolic compounds as quantified by high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, indicating that the Folin-Ciocalteu describes variation in sunflower phenolic content. Additionally, the diversity of flavonoids known from Helianthus include a number of those known to be sensitive to the aluminum complexation assay, indicating that this assay may also be a useful descriptor of relative variation in sunflower flavonoid content. In total, both the Folin-Ciocalteu and aluminum complexation assays appear to capture useful, if coarse, variation in secondary metabolites among Helianthus species, and seem useful as rapid low-cost methods for exploratory research, preliminary analyses, and potentially useful for high-throughput phenotyping within wild or cultivated sunflower with proper calibration.

Plant phenotyping relevance

野生ヒマワリの葉のフェノール類・フラボノイド量を測定する比色法の有用性と妥当性を検証しており、植物形質の定量法として中心的に扱っている。

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