Medicinal and Nutritional Value of the Chemical Compositions of Dioscorea opposita Thunb. cv. Tiegun Peel Based on UPLC-Q/TOF-MS/MS and Bioinformatics

Objective: Systematic analysis and identification of chemical constituents of Dioscorea opposita Thunb. cv. Tiegun peel, and exploration of its medicinal and nutritional value. Methods: Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q/TOF-MS/MS) was performed to analyze the chemical compositions of Dioscorea opposita Thunb. cv. Tiegun peel. The compounds were identified based on their primary and secondary mass spectrometry information and compared with the related references and databases. Further, bioinformatics was applied to predict the targets of potential active ingredients, enrich Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways, screen out the important targets, and explore its potential mechanism. Results: 33 compounds were identified such as apigenin, acacetin, liquiritigenin, batatasin I, which were considered to be the potentially vital compounds. Pathway enrichment analysis indicated that Dioscorea opposita Thunb. cv. Tiegun peel exerted medicinal effects by regulating cell signaling pathways, cancer, metabolic and other disease-related pathways. Conclusion: In this study, UPLC-Q/TOF-MS/MS combined with bioinformatics were used, which would provide an important reference for the identification of ingredients, selection of active compounds, discovery of potential medicinal nutritional value, as well as further development and utilization of Dioscorea opposita Thunb. cv. Tiegun peel.