Metabolic Profiling of Eclipta prostrata L.: Potentials of Untargeted Metabolomics in Traditional Medicine

We have demonstrated the use of untargeted metabolomics- a high-throughput analysis to probe the small molecule landscape of natural products based traditional medicine. The approach provides a global perspective on the quality of such natural medicine and the depth of secondary metabolites present in them. We utilized Eclipta prostrata L. as an example to demonstrate the utility of LC-MS and GC-MS based untargeted metabolomics. The mentioned research utilized three different preparations and successfully demonstrated the small molecule landscape differences in these samples. Preliminary statistical analysis using R-based web programs, indicated the samples grouped well indicating batch-to-batch consistency. Heatmaps generated from LC-MS and GC-MS data indicated the difference in abundance of various small molecules across the samples.