Characteristic differences in metabolite profile in male and female plants of dioecious Piper betle L.

Piper betle is a dioecious pan-Asiatic plant having cultural and medicinal uses. It belongs to the family Piperaceae and is a native of the tropics although it is also cultivated in subtropical areas. Flowering in P. betle occurs only in tropical regions. Due to lack of inductive floral cycles the plant remains in its vegetative state in the subtropics. Therefore, due to lack of flowering, gender distinction cannot be made the in the subtropics. Gender distinction in P. betle in vegetative state can be made using Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectroscopy (DARTMS), a robust highthroughput method. DARTMS analysis of leaf samples of two male and six female plants showed characteristic differences in the spectra between male and female plants. Semi-quantitative differences in some of the identified peaks in male and female landraces showed gender-based differences in metabolites. Cluster analysis using the peaks at m/z 151, 193, 235 and 252 showed two distinct clusters of male and female landraces. It appears that male and female plants besides having flowers of different sexes also have characteristic differences in the metabolites representing two metabolic types.

A stability-indicating ultra-performance liquid chromatographic method for estimation of related substances and degradants in paliperidone active pharmaceutical ingredient and its pharmaceutical dosage forms.

A simple, linear gradient, rapid, precise and stability-indicating analytical method was developed for the estimation of related substances and degradants of paliperidone API and tablets. The chromatographic separations were achieved using an Acquity ultra-performance liquid chromatograph (BEH 100 mm, 2.1 mm, 1.7 µm C-18 column) employing 0.01 M potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer (pH 2.0) as mobile phase A and acetonitrile-water (9:1) as mobile phase B. A linear gradient (mobile phase A, mobile phase B in the ratio of 84:16) with a 0.45 mL/min flow rate was chosen. All six impurities were eluted within five minutes of run time. The column temperature was maintained at 25 °C and a detector wavelength of 238 nm was employed. Paliperidone was exposed to thermal, photolytic, hydrolytic and oxidative stress conditions. The stressed samples were analyzed by the proposed method. Considerable degradation of the analyte was observed when it was subjected to oxidative conditions and impurity F was found to be the major degradant. Peak homogeneity data of paliperidone obtained by photodiode array (PDA) detection demonstrated the specificity of the method in the presence of degradants. The method was validated with respect to linearity, precision, accuracy, ruggedness, robustness, limit of detection and limit of quantification.