DNA Polymorphism on a Tool for Molecular Discrimination in Animal Species

Among ingredients of foods and processed foods used for human consumption, the problem of discrimination is serious because of the misidentification and contamination incidents. Contamination of the food is various, such as animal hair, moreover, the interest is high in food problems due to allergies, religion and culture. That why interest to the safety related to food has become high all over the world not only in Japan. Consequently, proper and reliable methods must be used for species determination. There are few methods reported for multiple species determination. In these methods many problems occurred, such as the minute size, poor preservation conditions and absence of DNA for analysis.

In this study, Multiplex PCR was used to analyze many samples simultaneously. In addition, Printed Array Strip (PAS) was also used which made the analysis quick, simple and cheap. In this method, amplification of a part of mitochondrial genome was done using Multiplex PCR. New specific PCR primers for each animal species, as well as construction of fast, simple and high sensitive molecular species determination using PAS method were established. We obtained PCR products for all animal species. In the 15 species (cow, pig, chicken, horse, sheep, rabbit, dog, cat, goat, bear, deer, mouse, rat, raccoon dog and human) tested, we could identify each animal using this novel method. In conclusion, this method is useful for animal species discrimination from fresh, processed meat and food. Moreover, it could be used in quick, simple and cheap analysis of variety of species and discrimination.