Abstract
Camellia nitidissima Chi (CNC), belonging to Camellia genus (Theaceae family), is a medicinal and edible plant in China. Among the whole plant, the CNC flowers are especially precious, but the biological activities and the compositions of the CNC flowers are unknown. In this study, inhibiting effects on the formation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) of five CNC flowers fractions and three isolated compounds were investigated, these three compounds are two flavonoid glycosides and one flavanol, namely kaempferol 3-O-[2,3,4-Tri-O-acetyl-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→3)-2,4-di-O-acetyl-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→6)]-β-D-glucopyranoside, kaempferol 3-O-[2,3,4-Tri-O-acetyl-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→3)-4-O-acetyl-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→6)]-β-D-glucopyranoside and catechin. Among these five fractions, the ethyl acetate fraction showed the highest total phenolic contents and inhibiting effects on AGE formation. Bovine serum albumin (BSA)-glucose and BSA-methylglyoxal assay showed that the ethyl acetate fraction inhibited AGE formation by 74.49% and 34.3% at 1 mg/mL, respectively. As the main components, these three compounds also showed remarkable inhibiting effects on AGE formation by scavenging methylglyoxal, next two catechin-carbonyl adducts were identified using HPLC-ESI-MS/MS. The results showed that the CNC flowers had remarkable inhibiting effects on the formation of AGEs. The primary structure-activity relationship showed (1) the glycosides could reduce the inhibiting effects compared to kaempferol and (2) the acetyl at position 2‴ in compound 1 had no remarkable influence of the inhibiting effects on AGE formation compared to compound 2.