title: Detection of Panax quinquefolius in Panax ginseng using 'subtracted diversity array'.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Food adulteration remains a major global concern. DNA fingerprinting has several advantages over chemical and morphological identification techniques. DNA microarray-based fingerprinting techniques have not been used previously to detect adulteration involving dried commercial samples of closely related species. Here we report amplification of low-level DNA obtained from dried commercial ginseng samples using the Qiagen REPLI-g Kit. Further, we used a subtracted diversity array (SDA) to fingerprint the two ginseng species, Panax ginseng and Panax quinquefolius, that are frequently mixed for adulteration.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The two ginseng species were successfully discriminated using SDA. Further, SDA was sensitive enough to detect a deliberate adulteration of 10% P. quinquefolius in P. ginseng. Thirty-nine species-specific features including 30 P. ginseng-specific and nine P. quinquefolius-specific were obtained. This resulted in a feature polymorphism rate of 10.5% from the 376 features used for fingerprinting the two ginseng species. The functional characterization of 14 Panax species-specific features by sequencing revealed one putative ATP synthase, six putative uncharacterized proteins, and two retroelements to be different in these two species.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SDA can be employed to detect adulterations in a broad range of plant samples.
authors.affiliation: School of Applied Sciences, Health Innovations Research Institute, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia.
authors.forename: Linhai
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.forename: Nitin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mantri
authors.forename: Chun Guang
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Charlie
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wohlmuth
authors.forename: Edwin C K
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Pang
mesh_terms: D016172:DNA Fingerprinting / Q000379:methods*; D018744:DNA, Plant / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D004340:Drug Contamination; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D005894:Panax / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D018517:Plant Roots; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D018626:Retroelements; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D018744:DNA, Plant; D010940:Plant Proteins; D018626:Retroelements