title: Identification of hare meat by a species-specific marker of mitochondrial origin.
abstract: Meat species identification in food has gained increasing interest in recent years due to public health, economic and legal concerns. Following the consumer trend towards high quality products, game meat has earned much attention. The aim of the present work was to develop a DNA-based technique able to identify hare meat. Mitochondrial cytochrome b gene was used to design species-specific primers for hare detection. The new primers proved to be highly specific to Lepus species, allowing the detection of 0.01% of hare meat in pork meat by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A real-time PCR assay with the new intercalating EvaGreen dye was further proposed as a specific and fast tool for hare identification with increased sensitivity (1pg) compared to end-point PCR (10pg). It can be concluded that the proposed new primers can be used by both species-specific end-point PCR or real-time PCR to accurately authenticate hare meat.
authors: REQUIMTE, Departamento de Ciências Químicas, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Aníbal Cunha, 164, 4099-030 Porto, Portugal.
authors: Cristina G
authors: CG
authors: Santos
authors: Vitor S
authors: VS
authors: Melo
authors: Joana S
authors: JS
authors: Amaral
authors: Letícia
authors: L
authors: Estevinho
authors: M Beatriz P P
authors: MB
authors: Oliveira
authors: Isabel
authors: I
authors: Mafra
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D045303:Cytochromes b / Q000235:genetics*; D004247:DNA / Q000302:isolation & purification; D017931:DNA Primers; D023381:Endpoint Determination; D005819:Genetic Markers; D034621:Hares / Q000235:genetics*; D008460:Meat / Q000032:analysis*; D008928:Mitochondria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers; D005819:Genetic Markers; D004247:DNA; D045303:Cytochromes b