Bioprospecting the Italian Flora for The Discovery of New Bioactive Phytochemicals and the Exploration of Chemodiversity in Different Plant Clades

With more than 11,000 taxa of vascular and non-vascular plants and a high level of endemism, the Italian flora is among the richest and most diverse in Europe. Spanning over 400 plant families, this remarkable biodiversity is reflected into a wide variety of plant specialized metabolomes, which constitute a largely unexplored molecular reservoir with a significant potential for bioprospecting. Furthermore, this diverse chemical landscape represents a valuable framework to investigate the chemo-evolutive dynamics in land plants, research still limited by the structural and biosynthetic complexity of plant metabolites. In the frame of the National Biodiversity Future Center, we launched a large-scale bioprospecting plan aimed at exploring the phytochemical diversity of the Italian flora with two main purposes: the discovery of novel bioactive compounds/phytocomplexes for human health and sustainable agriculture, and the comparison of plant metabolomes within specific evolutive clades to gain more information on the diversification of plant metabolism. Over a three-year sampling campaign, we collected more than 700 species – about 75% native and 25% alien – from botanic gardens, nurseries and open-field. This collection is a simplified model of the Italian flora, in which, at least for higher plants, we included all Italian plant families according to their real relative amplitudes (e.g., for the Angiosperms, in order: Asteraceae, Poaceae, Fabaceae, Rosaceae, etc.). The untargeted metabolomics analysis through UPLC-HRMS guides the selection of the species with the most interesting phytochemical profiles towards a downstream bioactivity screening program focused on non-communicable diseases (e.g. neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, metabolic syndrome, etc.) and crop enhancement and protection. Currently, we have profiled about 300 species and some of them have already shown, for instance, promising results against colorectal cancer (Gratiola officinalis) and glioblastoma (Succisa pratensis), and anti-genotoxic activities (Cistus monspeliensis). In parallel to the phytochemical profiling, we are generating data for the relative comparison of the plant metabolomes from species belonging to the following clades: Asterids, Rosids, Monocots, Magnoliids, Gymnosperms, Lycophytes and Monylophytes, Bryophytes. Preliminary results for the Rosid clade (about 160 species in the collection) are shown.