Recently, a review paper has been published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition by Professor Zhiwei Qin from Beijing Normal University. It is the top international journal in the field of food science and nutrition (Q1, IF = 11.18). This paper summarizes the information on the biological activity of Prunus mume Sieb. Et Zucc ( P. mume ), the structure-activity relationships (SAR) of bioactive compounds from the fruit of P. mume and also its important applications in different fields.
P. mume is commonly known as sour plum, and its nutritional quality is attributed to the presence of amino acids, organic acids, vitamins, anthocyanins, terpenes, phytosterols and flavonoids. These qualities have piqued research interests for nutrients and bioactive compounds for human health due to their multiple effects through antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antios-teoporosis and anticancer activities. P. mume has also been used in several fields, including medicine, food, chemistry and cosmetics industries. However, there are few papers on the biological activity, SAR and industrial application of P. mume , and this paper filled the gap. In this review article, the mechanism of biological activity and SAR of P. mume was summarized, and its biological applications in important fields such as medicine, food, chemistry and cosmetics were reviewed, which provided a reference for the nutritional value and application research of P. mume in the future. It can be predicted that the comprehensive application of nanotechnology, bioinformatics and genetic engineering can promote the application of P. mume as an important component of traditional Chinese medicine in human nutrition and health, as well as disease prevention, and provide a strong support for the application of small molecular natural products.
Professor Zhiwei Qin, associate director of Center for Biological Science and Technology, said, “This is the first review of our group at the beginning of 2022 and is also a follow-up work after the publication of the first paper in 2021, which can generally reflect our ongoing projects. This paper was published with the participation of four excellent undergraduates of Huitong College, which once again shows that the program, jointly formulated by Huitong College and Advanced Institute of Natural Sciences for training the outstanding and creative talents, is successful. At present, our research group has achieved many milestones of interesting and important projects, such as targeted evolution of microbial natural products, antibiotic drug design and development, chemical basis of plant-microbe interaction, and industrial application in drug discovery of big data and artificial intelligence. Some research papers will be published very soon this year. Importantly, the undergraduates of Huitong College have contributed greatly to this.”
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong, and Beijing Normal University via the Youth Talent Strategic Program Project. Professor Qin Zhiwei, Dr. Yang Chao from Macau University of Science and Technology and professor Jesus Simal-Gandara from Vigo University in Spain, are co-authors of this paper, and BNU Zhuhai is the first correspondence unit.
The link of this paper：
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/UADWKGNQQK8DCUXMCNIU/full?target=10.1080/10408398.2022.2042186
The link of another paper from Qin’s group:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408398.2021.2019673?journalCode=bfsn20