Dereplication of depsides from the lichen Pseudevernia furfuracea by centrifugal partition chromatography combined to 13C nuclear magnetic resonance pattern recognition

• The major depsides of a lichen extract were directly identified within mixtures.
• The initial extract was rapidly fractionated by CPC in the pH-zone refining mode.
• Hierarchical clustering of 13C NMR signals resulted in the identification of depside molecular skeletons.
• 13C chemical shift clusters were assigned to structures using a 13C NMR database.
• Six depsides were unambiguously identified by this approach.

Lichens produce a diversity of secondary metabolites, among them depsides comprised of two or more hydroxybenzoic acid units linked by ester, ether, or CC-bonds. During classic solid support-based purification processes, depsides are often hydrolyzed and in many cases time, consuming procedures result only in the isolation of decomposition products. In an attempt to avoid extensive purification steps while maintaining metabolite structure integrity, we propose an alternative method to identify the major depsides of a lichen crude extract (Pseudevernia furfuracea var. ceratea (Ach.) D. Hawksw., Parmeliaceae) directly within mixtures.Exploiting the acidic character of depsides and differences in polarity, the extract was fractionated by centrifugal partition chromatography in the pH-zone refining mode resulting in twelve simplified mixtures of depsides. After 13C nuclear magnetic resonance analysis of the produced fractions, the major molecular structures were directly identified within the fraction series by using a recently developed pattern recognition method, which combines spectral data alignment and hierarchical clustering analysis. The obtained clusters of 13C chemical shifts were assigned to their corresponding molecular structures with the help of an in-house 13C NMR chemical shift database, resulting in six unambiguously identified compounds, namely methyl β-orcinolcarboxylate (1), atranorin (2), 5-chloroatranorin (3), olivetol carboxylic acid (4), olivetoric acid (5), and olivetonide (6).

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