A Review on Application of DNA Barcoding Technology for Rapid Molecular Diagnostics of Adulterants in Herbal Medicine.

The rapid molecular diagnostics of adulterants in herbal medicine using DNA barcoding forms the core of this meticulously detailed review, based on two decades of data. With 80% of the world's population using some form of herbal medicine, authentication, quality control, and detection of adulterants warrant DNA barcoding. A combined group of keywords were used for literature review using the PubMed, the ISI Web of Knowledge, Web of Science (WoS), and Google Scholar databases. All the papers (N = 210) returned by the search engines were downloaded and systematically analyzed. Detailed analysis of conventional DNA barcodes were based on retrieved sequences for internal transcribed spacer (ITS) (412,189), rbcL (251,598), matK (210,835), and trnH-psbA (141,846). The utility of databases such as The Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD), NCBI, GenBank, and Medicinal Materials DNA Barcode Database (MMDBD) has been critically examined for the identification of unknown species from known databases. The current review gives an overview of the ratio of adulterated to authentic drugs for some countries along with the state of the art technology currently being used in the identification of adulterated medicines. In this review, efforts were made to systematically analyze and arrange the research and reviews on the basis of technical progress. The review concludes with the future of DNA-based herbal medicine adulteration detection, forecasting the reliance on the metabarcoding technology. DNA barcoding technology for differentiating adulterated herbal medicine.