Itches-stimulating compounds from Colocasia esculenta (taro): bioactive-guided screening and LC-MS/MS identification.

Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schoot (taro) is one of the most common crops in the world. Its rhizome was a tonic medicine and accustomed to treat some gastrointestinal disorders in traditional Chinese medicine. Today, the taro was further developed as anticancer prescription in herbal therapy. However, the mucilage of the fresh taro has irritation, and causes itchy feeling. The components in the mucilage were not evident up to now. Two active compounds, uracil and glycol-protein taro lectin (Accession number: A5HMM7), were purified and identified from the fresh taro. The glycol-protein taro lectin showed nerve stimulation activity on dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons from GCaMP transgenic mice at the concentration of 1mg/mL.