Pharmacological action of some common essential oil-bearing plants used in indigenous medicine

The similarly in plant physiology and the difficulty of plant classification, in some medicinal plant species, especially plants of the Zingiberaceae family, are a major problem for pharmacologists, leading to mistaken use. To overcome this problem, the proteomic base method was used to study protein profiles of the plant model, Curcuma comosa Roxb., which is a member of the Zingiberaceae and has been used in traditional Thai medicine as an anti-inflammatory agent for the treatment of postpartum uterine bleeding.

Due to the complexity of protein extraction from this plant, microscale solution-phase isoelectric focusing (MicroSol-IEF) was used to enrich and improve the separation of Curcuma comosa rhizomes phenol-soluble proteins, prior to resolving and analyzing by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and identification by tandem mass spectrometry. The protein patterns showed a high abundance of protein spots in the acidic range, including three lectin proteins. The metabolic and defense enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD) and ascorbate peroxidase, that are associated with antioxidant activity, were mainly found in the basic region. Furthermore, cysteine protease was found in this plant, as had been previously reported in other Zingiberaceae plants.