Desenvolvimento e validação de metodologia para a determinação do neuro precursor L-dopa em folhas de café por HPLC-DAD

Abstract

Coffee, in addition to being the world's largest commodity, also has extensive literature surrounding its beneficial effects on human health. However, the composition of the coffee plant in its entirety is still unknown. Therefore, the use of transcriptomic data applied to the inference and monitoring of metabolic pathways stands out for providing a solid basis for the discovery of important compounds in plant tissues. Thus, from in silico analysis of coffee leaves, the presence of L-dopa in these tissues was discovered. L-dopa is a phenolic amino acid of invaluable pharmacological importance, which acts mainly in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, in addition to being a natural secondary metabolite of plants. In this work, the best conditions for L-dopa degradation were studied using mature Coffea arabica leaves. The development of the extraction methodology was based on the univariate study of the influence of three parameters, including the proportion between the mass of dry plant material and volume of solvent extractor, concentration of the solvent extractor and extraction time. The analysis of samples and determination of chemical species was carried out using the liquid chromatography technique coupled to a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). A developed methodology was validated and applied to determine L-dopa in young, mature and senescent leaves of three coffee species, Coffea arabica, Coffea eugenioides and Coffea canephora.