Poisonous Substances in Tropical Medicinal and Edible Plants: Traditional Uses, Toxicology, and Characterization by Hyphenated Mass Spectrometry Techniques

Alkaloids are natural metabolites containing nitrogen atoms, produced for

different biological functions by plants, animals, and microorganisms. In most cases, its

production is related to the defense mechanism of an organism through allelopathic

effects. Because of this allelopathic property, some of these alkaloids are used as

pesticides and can somehow be found in food and beverages as exogenous

contaminants. Other contaminations by alkaloids come from industrial processing; so,

ingestion of contaminated food or drinks can cause poisoning or death. Many of these

plants, although composed of toxic substances, are also used as traditional medicines.

Therefore, the compilation of these plants, their chemical constituents, and their

pharmacological effects remain important. This paper aims to report traditional

preparations and the use of edible plants containing toxic components, their

toxicological records of a part of these poisonous metabolites, some regulations on

their tolerable dose, and appropriate hyphenated techniques related to mass

spectrometric for their separation, detection, quantification, and characterization. In

addition, a particular emphasis will be placed on the properties of the stationary and

mobile phases used for these studies. The fragmentation mechanism pathways based on

mass spectrometry data for these substances will be widely described, and the

diagnostic peak will be highlighted.

Keywords: Alkaloids, Edible plants, Mass spectrometry, Toxicology, Traditional remedy.

Cite as

Current Chinese Science

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Current Computer-Aided Drug Design

Current Bioactive Compounds

Current Medicinal Chemistry

Current Topics in Chemistry

The Natural Products Journal

Current Catalysis

Current Chinese Chemistry

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Advances in Mathematical Chemistry and Applications

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Advances in Organic Synthesis

DOI https://doi.org/10.2174/9789815050059122020002	Print ISSN 2717-6029
Publisher Name Bentham Science Publisher	Online ISSN 2717-6037

Applications of Modern Mass Spectrometry