Weigh Biomaterials by Quantifying Species-specific DNA with Real-time PCR

Abstract

What’s on the label is not what’s in the bottle, from food products to herbal medicinal products (HMPs), economically-motivated biomaterials adulteration is a long-term problem affecting the food and drug industry. Accurate identification of the biomaterial ingredients in processed commodities is highly desirable. In this field, DNA-based techniques have proved to be powerful tools to overcome qualitative challenges. However, is it possible to quantify the weight of biological materials with PCR? Therefore, a basic scientific question needs to be answered: what’s the relationship between DNA content and the mass of biological materials? Is DNA content directly proportional to the mass of biological materials as most of the researchers previously thought? In this study, we firstly found that there exists a linear relation between DNA contents and the weight of biomaterials indeed when the analytical practices are fully controlled. In this case, the mass of targeted biomaterials in the highly processed commercial products can also be calculated by quantifying the species-specific DNA through classic real-time PCR with a good reproducibility.

Food authentication from shotgun sequencing reads with an application on high protein powders

“…In highly processed commercial food products, observed matrix species’ DNA content linearly correlates with the mass of that species. 22 This shows promise for translating the resulting sequencing read proportions into ingredient weight proportions in a food sample. Normalization by genome size or using an experimentally determined normalizing factor per species may be required to accurately quantify ingredient proportions in complex food samples.…”

High-Throughput Identification of Allergens in a Food System via Hybridization Probe Cluster-Targeted Next-Generation Sequencing

“…The second challenge is to improve targeted methods for extracting the genome from highly processed food products. In intensively processed food products, observed matrix species’ DNA correlates with the mass of that species . HPC-NGS can have higher accuracy and sensitivity for potential application identification of low-titer biological components in food systems.…”

“…In intensively processed food products, observed matrix species' DNA correlates with the mass of that species. 42 HPC-NGS can have higher accuracy and sensitivity for potential application identification of lowtiter biological components in food systems.…”

Real-time fluorescence and colorimetric identification of bulbus fritillariae using recombinase assisted loop-mediated isothermal DNA amplification (RALA)

“…Traditional identification methods for BF drugs include morphologic detection, microscopical identification ( Wang et al, 2006 ), physical and chemical tests ( Xu et al, 2019 ), chromatographic and spectral analysis ( Cui et al, 2018 ; Luo et al, 2018 ). Due to its high accuracy and specificity, DNA-based molecular biology techniques have been becoming increasingly popular in the identification of herbal medicines as well as processed herbal products ( Chen et al, 2010 , 2012 , 2017 ). Among the various DNA identification methods, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the first and remains the most popular DNA amplification technology for distinguishing various kinds of herbal medicines ( Han et al, 2018 ; Chen et al, 2019 ), while isothermal DNA amplification methods are getting more popular because of their potential use in field-testing ( Ma et al, 2018 ; Lan et al, 2019 ; Lee and Hxiao, 2019 ).…”