Plant Diversity ›› 2007, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (06): 713-716.

• Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Occurrence of 8-oxocaffeine and Pyrimidine Alkaloids in Pu-Er Ripe Tea

SHE Gai-Mei1 , 3 , CHEN Ke-Ke1 , ZHANG Ying-Jun1, YANG Chong-Ren1   

  1. 1 State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Plant Resources in West China , Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204 , China ;
    2 Beijing University of Chinese Traditional Medicine, Beijing 100029 , China
  • Received:2007-08-03 Online:2007-12-25 Published:2007-12-25

Abstract: By means of column chromatographic techniques , 8-oxocaffeine , together with pyrimidine alkaloids ( deoxythymidine, thymine and uracil ) , flavonoidal glycoside ( engeletin) and simple phenols (1 , 2 , 4-benzenetriol , 1 , 3-benzenediol and 4-methyl-1 , 2-benzenediol ) were isolated for the first time from Pu-Er ripe tea . Since Pu-Er ripe tea is produced from the leaves of Camellia sinensis var. assamica by the post microbial fermentation process, the formation of 8-oxocaffeine should be due to the biotransformation of caffeine . On the other hand , deoxythymidine might be derived from the combination of pyrimidine alkaloid in tea leaves with microbial secondary metabolite . Both of them were found to be the new characteristic principles of Pu-Er ripe tea .

Key words: Pu-Er ripe tea

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