Establishment and application of a fluorescent polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method for identifying porcine, caprine, and bovine meats

A method of fluorescent Polymerase Chain Reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was applied as an analytical and quantitative tool for meat identification. Following alignments of the nucleotide sequences, an oligonucleotide primer pair was designed to amplify the partial sequences within the 12S ribosomal RNA (12S rRNA) gene of mitochondrial DNA from porcine, caprine, and bovine meats. No fragment can be amplified from dog, cat, fish, duck, goose, turkey, and chicken DNA with the primer pair. Using fluorescence sensor capillary electrophoresis, the species-specific DNA fingerprints of pork, goat, and beef were generated by restriction enzyme digestion following a fluorescence-labeling PCR amplification. Species identification was conducted on the meat mixtures. The reliably semiquantitative levels were below 1% for binary mixtures of pork, goat, and beef. Cooking and autoclaving of meats did not influence the generation of the PCR-RFLP profiles or the analytical accuracy.