Page 180 - 2025中醫藥與天然藥物聯合學術研討會-中醫藥與天然藥物的挑戰Ｘ機遇與未來大會手冊

PC-62

Mass spectrometry-based metabolomic profilings of soft coral Lobophytum

crassum across sites and seasons via multivariate analysis

2
1
Kuan-Ying Lai, Y u -Liang Yang, Chih-Chuang Liaw* ,1,3

1 Department of Marine Biotechnology and Resources, National Sun Yat-sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2 Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan
3 Doctoral Degree Program in Marine Biotechnology, National Sun Yat-sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
* E-mail: ccliaw@mail.nsysu.edu.tw

Abstract
Soft corals of the genus Lobophytum are prolific producers of structurally diverse secondary
metabolites, particularly diterpenoids and steroids, many of which exhibit potent ecological and
pharmacological activities. Over the past three decades, soft coral samples collected non-
systematically from various sites around Taiwan have been studied for their natural products.
However, the environmental modulation of these metabolites remains poorly understood. Using
a curated database of natural products from Taiwanese soft corals, annotated with the collection
sites and dates, we observed that the oxidation levels of cembranes in Sclerophytum flexibile
and Lobophytum crassum appear to increase with rising seawater temperatures, based on
repeated collections of eight species across multiple locations. To investigate the influence of
environmental conditions on secondary metabolism, we applied a PCA loading-guided feature-
ranking strategy, integrated with compound annotation with Sirius, to analyze seasonal and
geographic shifts in the metabolomes of L. crassum that we transplanted in Dongyupingyu Islet,
Badouzi farming pond, and Kenting.Multivariate statistical analysis (PCA, PLS-DA/OPLS-DA)
revealed that both geographic location and seasonal variation significantly contributed to
metabolic divergence. PCA results showed more pronounced when restricted to terpenoid
features, indicating that terpenoids are major drivers of site-specific variation. Systematic
annotation of features and chemical classes further demonstrated that diterpenoids and other
lipid-related compounds are key contributors to seasonal differentiation. Oxidized terpenoids
were more abundant in summer samples, whereas less oxidized features were predominant in
winter samples. These findings highlight the strong influence of seasonal temperature shifts on
metabolite oxidation levels, providing new insights into the ecological and chemotaxonomic
relevance of oxidative modifications in soft coral secondary metabolism.

Keywords: Lobophytum crassum; molecular networking; PCA; Diterpene; Soft coral;
Metabolomics