Yicun Cai, Xiang Li, Rong Lv, Jielin Yang, Jian Li, Yuping He, and Liangwen Pan
BioMed Research International, ,
In this project, a highly precise quantitative method based on the digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR) technique was developed
to determine the weight of pork and chicken in meat products. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is currently
used for quantitative molecular analysis of the presence of species-specific DNAs in meat products. However, it is limited in
amplification efficiency and relies on standard curves based Ct values, detecting and quantifying low copy number target DNA,
as in some complex mixture meat products. By using the dPCR method, we find the relationships between the raw meat weight and
DNA weight and between the DNA weight and DNA copy number were both close to linear. This enabled us to establish formulae
to calculate the raw meat weight based on the DNA copy number. The accuracy and applicability of this method were tested and
verified using samples of pork and chicken powder mixed in known proportions. Quantitative analysis indicated that dPCR is
highly precise in quantifying pork and chicken in meat products and therefore has the potential to be used in routine analysis by
government regulators and quality control departments of commercial food and feed enterprises.