There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Many meat products nowadays may contain several species in different proportions.
To protect consumers from fraud and misdeclarations, not only a qualitative but also
a quantitative monitoring of ingredients of complex food products is necessary. DNA
based techniques like the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are widely used for identification
of species but no answer to the proportional amount of a certain species could be
given using current techniques. In this study we report the development and evaluation
of a quantitative competitive polymerase chain reaction (QC-PCR) for detection and
quantification of porcine DNA using a new porcine specific PCR system based on the
growth hormone gene of sus scrofa. A DNA competitor differing by 30 bp in length from
the porcine target sequence was constructed and used for PCR together with the target
DNA. Specificity of the new primers was evaluated with DNA from cattle, sheep, chicken
and turkey. The competitor concentration was adjusted to porcine DNA contents of 2
or 20% by coamplification of mixtures containing porcine and corresponding amounts
of bovine DNA in defined ratios.