Chemical composition and α-amylase inhibitory activity of the essential oil from Sabina chinensis cv. Kaizuca leaves

Sabina chinensis cv. Kaizuca (SCK) is a variant of S. chinensis L. The essential oil from its leaves exhibited α-amylase inhibitory activity in vitro and the IC50 value was 187.08 ± 0.56 μg/mL. Nineteen compounds were identified from this essential oil by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. The major compounds identified were bornyl acetate (42.6%), elemol (20.5%), β-myrcene (13.7%) and β-linalool (4.0%). In order to study the reason of the α-amylase inhibitory activity of this essential oil, the identified compounds were docked with α-amylase by molecular docking individually. Among these compounds, γ-eudesmol exhibited the lowest binding energy (−6.73 kcal/mol), followed by α-copaen-11-ol (−6.66 kcal/mol), cubedol (−6.39 kcal/mol) and α-acorenol (−6.12 kcal/mol). The results indicated that these compounds were the active ingredients responsible for the α-amylase inhibitory activity of essential oil from SCK.