First report of fingerprinting dried herbal products using a subtractive diversity array

Introduction Sequence-independent microarrays have never been used to identify and authenticate dried herbal plants. Methods: We report successful fingerprinting of seven species: Leonurus sibiricus, Astragalus membranaceus, Coix lachryma-jobi, Magnolia biondii, Abutilon theophrasti, Physalis alkekengi, and Salvia miltiorrhiza from dried tissues using a sequence-independent microarray, “Subtracted Diversity Array”. Results: Herbal plants could be identified from tissues as they were sold at the clinic. Hierarchical cluster of these species generated using SPSS v.15.0 confirmed to their predicted taxonomical relationships as specified in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group II classification system. A polymorphism rate of 40.7% was achieved from the 376 spots used for fingerprinting. Functional characterization of polymorphic features by sequencing revealed 27.1% of those were retroelements or genes. Conclusions: This technique provides a new way to produce markers for authenticating dried herbal samples.