Twenty years in the 21st century: identification technologies for and multimodal research on chemical changes in exploration of processing mechanism of Chinese medicine / 中国中药杂志

Chinese medicine undergoes complex chemical changes during processing and identifying these changes is the key to the processing mechanism. In the past 20 years of the 21 st century, research on the chemical changes in Chinese medicine after processing has focused the changes in the biopharmaceutical process in addition to the variation during processing. With the surging of information technologies, various identification technologies(instrumental analysis techniques, molecular biological techniques, data mining techniques, and biotransformation techniques) have developed rapidly and been widely applied to the research on processing mechanism. Thus, based on the chemical changes in the processing and biopharmaceutical process, the author suggested a research tactic of multimodal identification as the core by reorganizing key technologies for chemical identification from studies of the processing mechanism of Chinese me-dicine, aiming at establishing an interdisciplinary multi-dimensional research model for the processing mechanism of Chinese medicine.

Analyze moisture transformation and transport rules during processing of Paeoniae Radix Alba by using low-field NMR / 中国中药杂志

Moisture status and content during the processing of Paeoniae Radix Alba were studied by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate the changes of transverse relaxation time (T ₂) and MRI images during boiling and drying processes of Paeoniae Radix Alba. The results showed that water in Paeoniae Radix Alba fresh products was major of free water, and in the boiling process, the content of free water increased whereas the content of bound water declined. At the end of boiling, content of free water reached over 90%. During the drying process, T ₂ moved to the left, and moisture mobility was reduced. The MRI image directly showed that moisture transfer was outside-in process for both increase and decrease. At the end of drying, remaining moisture was mainly present in inner layer of Paeoniae Radix Alba. Quality and appearance were affected by the change of moisture during processing process of medicinal herbs. NMR and MRI could provide direct reference evidence for its moisture changes, and the results of this study could provide direct references and technical support for optimization of processing process of root medicinal materials and evaluation of Chinese herbal pieces.