Discovering Bryophyte chemobiodiversity: an untargeted metabolomic approach

Among the large and diversified plant species that populate our planet, bryophytes certainly occupy an important place in the plant kingdom. This group of ancient non-vascular and simple plants evolved more than 350 million years ago from green algae, and comprise more than 20.000 species considering Mosses, Hornworts and Liverworts. During their evolution, bryophytes have adapted to live in different environments by developing several adaptations and strategies, including the biosynthesis of specialized metabolites, although poor information are available. As a fundamental part of the large project of the National Biodiversity Future Center that aims to explore the biodiversity of a core-collection representative of the entire Italian flora, this work is focused on the study the chemobiodiversity of species of bryophytes, including mosses and liverworts, using two bioprospecting approaches. For liveworts, hydrated starting material was cleaned and subsequently sampled forming 3 different representative biological replicates, which will be used to study the secondary metabolites accumulation through UPLC-HRMS untargeted analysis. For mosses, the dehydrated starting material was divided into two main portions: the first one was used for the preparation of 3 biological replicates and the other one was hydrated for 7 days before the sampling. Methanolic extracts will be prepared from sampled material for subsequent untargeted analysis by UPLC-HRMS, allowing to elucidate the chemobiodiversity of selected moss species and to evaluate the impact of rehydration on the accumulation of bioactive molecules in these land plants. Overall, this research work can represent an important starting point for further studies on bryophytes.