Open Access

COMMUNICATION

Electrochemical Identification of Yulania spp. by Fingerprinting of Leaves Using Glassy Carbon Electrode

Zhiguo Lu¹, Yuhong Zheng^1,*, Pengchong Zhang², Boyuan Fan³, Aimin Yu⁴, Li Fu^3,*
1 Institute of Botany, Jiangsu Province and Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nanjing Botanical Garden, Mem. Sun Yat-Sen), Nanjing, 210014, China
2 Hangzhou Botanical Garden (Hangzhou West Lake Academy of Landscape Science), Hangzhou, 310013, China
3 College of Materials and Environmental Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, 310018, China
4 Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
* Corresponding Authors: Yuhong Zheng. Email: ; Li Fu. Email:
(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Chemosensors in Phytochemistry and Species Identification)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2022, 91(11), 2549-2558. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2022.021288

Received 06 January 2022; Accepted 15 March 2022; Issue published 12 July 2022

Abstract

In this communication, we used electrochemical sensor for recording the electrochemical profiles of eleven species of Yulania spp. from leaf extract. Two solvents and two buffer conditions were used for electrochemical fingerprints collection. Their electrochemical fingerprints can be converted to different patterns and consequently for species recognition. The results indicate the pattern recognition is much convenient than that of the recognition of species directly using voltammetric signal. The current information in electrochemical fingerprinting represents the type and amount of electrochemically active molecules, which linked to the genetic differences among the plants. Therefore, the electrochemical fingerprints were applied for further phylogenetic study. The phylogenetic tree deduced from voltametric curves is divided into three main groups. The first clade contains Y. denudate, Liriodendron chinense, Y. cylindrica, Y. biondii, Y. sprengeri. The second clade contains Y. zenii, Y. liliiflora, Y. kobus, and Y. amoena. The third clade contains Y. × soulangeana, Manglietia fordiana and Y. sinostellata. In addition, Y. salicifolia is not in these main clades. The results demonstrate that electrochemical fingerprinting can be used as a com-plementary tool in the study of phylogenetics.

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Keywords

Phylogenetic; Yulania spp.; plant identification; fingerprints; chemotaxonomy

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