Systematic estimation of potential risk caused by the replacement of aconite's cultivar

Background: Aconite is a famous toxic medicinal plant in the world. But in China, the aconite cultivar, Qingchuan cultivar, which has been stably used for 2000 years, are being rapidly replaced by the Liangshan cultivar, a new cultivar with better agronomic traits. However, the risk of the replacement is still unknown. Materials and Methods: We combine field research and cultivation experiments to clarify differences in provenance and differences in agronomic traits. We used high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to analyze the content of key ingredients in commercially available medicines and semi-finished drugs. We then performed a transcriptome analysis of the two resources to study the key differential pathways of the two species and conducted a systematic discussion. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical differences were assessed by analysis of variance or least significant difference. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The survey and cultivation experiments showed that the overwhelming superiority of agronomic traits had already made Liangshan cultivar occupy the vast majority of areas. HPLC showed that the content of diester alkaloids in the Liangshan cultivar was slightly higher and that of higenamine was significantly lower. Analysis of the patented drug and fuzi flake demonstrated a strong correlation between higenamine and cardiac activity. Transcriptome analysis revealed that the upregulation of multiple genes in the isoquinoline pathway in Qingchuan cultivar resulted in the large difference of higenamine.