Application of Biotransformation-Guided Purification in Chinese Medicine: An Example to Produce Butin from Licorice

Natural compounds are considered treasures in biotechnology; however, the past, process of discovering bioactive is time consuming, and purification validation biofunctions biochemistry isolated from a medicinal herb tedious tasks. In this study, we developed an economical called biotransformation-guided (BGP), which applied to analyze licorice, traditional Chinese medicine widely used many therapies. This contains various flavonoids triterpenoids and, thus, suitable material assess ability BGP identify produce compounds. process, ethyl acetate extract commercial licorice was partially purified into three fractions by Sephadex LH-20 chromatography, Bacillus megaterium tyrosinase (BmTYR) catalyze biotransformation each fraction. One products produced via BmTYR-driven biotransformation-positive using preparative C-18 high-performance liquid it identified as butin (3?-hydroxyliquiritigenin) through nucleic magnetic resonance mass spectral analyses. Butin liquiritigenin BmTYR-catalyzed hydroxylation, with precursor. The proposed alternative approach quickly biotransformed licorice. Moreover, demonstrated antioxidant activity that stronger over 100-fold compared its precursor (liquiritigenin). study showed could obtain validate molecules crude extracts herbs.