Specific identification of chicken and soybean fraud in premium burgers using multiplex-PCR method

Rapid and Simultaneous Authentication of Six Laver Species Using Capillary Electrophoresis-Based Multiplex PCR

Lavers are typically consumed in dried or seasoned forms. However, commercially processed lavers can lead to seafood fraud because it is impossible to authenticate the original species based on morphological characteristics alone. In this study, we developed a capillary electrophoresis-based multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to authenticate six different laver species. The species-specific primer sets to target the chloroplast rbcL or rbcS genes were newly designed. We successfully established both singleplex and multiplex conditions, which resulted in specific amplicons for each species (N. dentata, 274 bp; N. yezoensis, 211 bp; N. seriata, 195 bp; N. tenera, 169 bp; N. haitanensis, 127 bp; P. suborbiculata, 117 bp). Moreover, the assays were sensitive enough to detect DNA ranging from 10 to 0.1 pg of DNA. The optimized capillary electrophoresis-based multiplex PCR was successfully applied to 40 commercial laver products. In addition to detecting the laver species as stated on the commercial label, the assay discovered cases where less expensive species were mixed in. With its advantageous properties, such as short amplicon size, high specificity, and superior sensitivity, this assay could be used for the authentication of the six laver species.

Rapid Detection of Porcine DNA in Meatball Using Recombinase Polymerase Amplification Couple with Lateral Flow Immunoassay for Halal Authentication

Point-of-care diagnostic methods for animal species determination are critical for rapid, simple, and accurate enforcement of food labelling. PCR is the most common method for species identification. However, the requirement of using a thermal cycler created drawbacks for the PCR application, particularly in low-resource settings. Hence, in this study, a method for porcine DNA detection using recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), coupled with nucleic acid lateral flow immunoassay (NALFIA), was developed. Porcine-specific primers targeting pig (Sus scrofa) cytochrome b gene fragments specifically amplify a 197 bp fragment of the mitochondrial gene as being visualized by 2% agarose gel and PCRD NALFIA. The reaction temperature and time were 39 °C and 20 min, respectively. Herein, the specificity of the primers to porcine was confirmed after being assayed against six animal species, namely cow, goat, chicken, duck, dog, and rabbit. The porcine-specific RPA assay shows a high limit of detection of 0.01 ng/µL pork DNA. Based on the preliminary performance data obtained from this study, the potential of this method as a rapid and sensitive tool for porcine DNA detection in meat-based products is foreseen.

Comparative review and the recent progress in detection technologies of meat product adulteration

Meat adulteration, mainly for the purpose of economic pursuit, is widespread and leads to serious public health risks, religious violations, and moral loss. Rapid, effective, accurate, and reliable detection technologies are keys to effectively supervising meat adulteration. Considering the importance and rapid advances in meat adulteration detection technologies, a comprehensive review to summarize the recent progress in this area and to suggest directions for future progress is beneficial. In this review, destructive meat adulteration technologies based on DNA, protein, and metabolite analyses and nondestructive technologies based on spectroscopy were comparatively analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages, application situations of these technologies were discussed. In the future, determining suitable indicators or markers is particularly important for destructive methods. To improve sensitivity and save time, new interdisciplinary technologies, such as biochips and biosensors, are promising for application in the future. For nondestructive techniques, convenient and effective chemometric models are crucial, and the development of portable devices based on these technologies for onsite monitoring is a future trend. Moreover, omics technologies, especially proteomics, are important methods in laboratory detection because they enable multispecies detection and unknown target screening by using mass spectrometry databases.