Validate antibacterial mode and find main bioactive components of traditional Chinese medicine Aquilegia oxysepala.

Traditional Chinese medicines have been used for thousands of years and are still being used as one of the regular treatments for many diseases. However, their mechanisms were still unknown. In this investigation, a possible procedure combining metabonomics and principal component analysis to investigate antibacterial modes of action and find main antimicrobial component in traditional Chinese medicine, Aquilegia oxysepala, is developed. Metabolic profiles of Staphylococcus aureus treated with nine antibiotics of known modes of action and with A. oxysepala were acquired by HPLC/DAD/ESI-MS. After statistical processing by principal components analysis on metabolic profiles, two conclusions could be drawn: (1) the target of A. oxysepala may be similar to that of lincolmensin, erythromycin, chloromycetin, streptomycin, and acheomycin, whose targets are protein; (2) its bioactive component playing main antimicrobial roles on S. aureus may be maguoflorine.