Research progress in microevolutionary process of excellent traits and quality of Dao-di herbs / 中国中药杂志

Dao-di herbs are the treasure of Chinese materia medica and one of the characteristic research objects of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM). Probing into the microevolution of Dao-di herbs can help to reveal their biological essence and quality formation mechanisms. The progress in molecular biology and omics provides the possibility to elucidate the phylogenetic and quality forming characteristics of Dao-di herbs at the molecular level. In particular, genomics serves as a powerful tool to decipher the genetic origins of Dao-di herbs, and molecular markers have been widely used in the research on the genetic diversity and population structure of Dao-di herbs. Focusing on the excellent traits and quality of Dao-di herbs, this paper reviews the studies about the microevolution process of quality formation mechanisms of Dao-di herbs with the application of molecular markers and omics, aiming to underpin the protection and utilization of TCM resources.

A new research paradigm in modernization of traditional Chinese medicine: single cell pharmacology / 药学学报

Single cell "omics" technology enables the capture of genome, transcriptome, proteome and other omics information in a high-throughput and unbiased manner at single-cell resolution, allowing the characterization of the functional state of individual cells to reveal their heterogeneity and differential responses to drug treatment. This technology has wide application in pharmacological research, facilitating drug screening, efficacy evaluation, and mechanistic studies. We envision that, in the field of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), single cell omics technology can be applied in the identification of active ingredients and drug targets, and elucidation of drug mechanism of action. In this article, we briefly introduce the single cell omics technology - particularly single cell transcriptome sequencing, and review its application in the field of modern drug research. Based on that, we propose the concept of "single cell pharmacology" and articulate how it can be applied to transform the pharmacological research of TCM and promote TCM modernization.

Recent progress in applying network pharmacology to research of Chinese materia medica / 中草药

Chinese materia medica (CMM) has the multi-component, multi-target, and multi-pathway characteristics, which are coincided with the theory of network pharmacology. Therefore, applying network pharmacology to CMM researches will be helpful to explain the effects of CMM in the treatment of complex diseases holistically and systematically. In this paper, the recent progress in the applications of network pharmacology in CMM studies has been reviewed, including prediction and identification of targets and core bioactive components, clarification of the mechanism of action, explanation of the prescription composition rules, development of new indications, discovery of new active compounds and the combined application of network pharmacology and omics technologies, so as to accelerate the extensive applications of this new technology.