Antioxidant Effects and Potential Molecular Mechanism of Action of Limonium aureum Extract Based on Systematic Network Pharmacology

Abstract

Oxidative stress is the redox imbalance state of organisms that involves in a variety of biological processes of diseases. <i>Limonium aureum</i> (L.) Hill. is an excellent wild plant resource in northern China, which has potential application value for treating oxidative stress. However, there are few studies that focused on the antioxidant effect and related mechanism of <i>L. aureum</i>. Thus, the present study combining systematic network pharmacology and molecular biology aimed to investigate the antioxidant effects of <i>L. aureum</i> and explore its underlying anti-oxidation mechanisms. First, the antioxidant activity of <i>L. aureum</i> extracts was confirmed by <i>in vitro</i> and intracellular antioxidant assays. Then, a total of 11 bioactive compounds, 102 predicted targets, and 70 antioxidant-related targets were obtained from open source databases. For elucidating the molecular mechanisms of <i>L. aureum</i>, the PPI network and integrated visualization network based on bioinformatics assays were constructed to preliminarily understand the active compounds and related targets. The subsequent enrichment analysis results showed that <i>L. aureum</i> mainly affect the biological processes involving oxidation-reduction process, response to drug, etc., and the interference with these biological processes might be due to the simultaneous influence on multiple signaling pathways, including the HIF-1 and ERBB signaling pathways. Moreover, the mRNA levels of predicted hub genes were measured by qRT-PCR to verify the regulatory effect of <i>L. aureum</i> on them. Collectively, this finding lays a foundation for further elucidating the anti-oxidative damage mechanism of <i>L. aureum</i> and promotes the development of therapeutic drugs for oxidative stress.