DNA Barcoding Meets Nanotechnology: Development of a Universal Colorimetric Test for Food Authentication.

Food trade globalization and the growing demand for selected food varieties have led to the intensification of adulteration cases, especially in the form of species substitution and mixing with cheaper taxa. This phenomenon has huge economic impact and sometimes even public health implications. DNA barcoding represents a well-proven molecular approach to assess the authenticity of food items, although its use is hampered by analytical constraints and timeframes that are often prohibitive for the food market. To address such issues, we have introduced a new technology, named NanoTracer, that allows for rapid and naked-eye molecular traceability of any food and requires limited instrumentation and cost-effective reagents. Moreover, unlike sequencing, this method can be used to identify not only the substitution of a fine ingredient, but also its dilution with cheaper ones.

[1]  Josep Rubert,et al.  Saffron authentication based on liquid chromatography high resolution tandem mass spectrometry and multivariate data analysis. , 2016, Food chemistry.

[2]  J. Spink,et al.  Defining the public health threat of food fraud. , 2011, Journal of food science.

[3]  Amit Kumar,et al.  DNA barcoding: an efficient tool to overcome authentication challenges in the herbal market. , 2016, Plant biotechnology journal.

[4]  E. Bonerba,et al.  Species identification in fish fillet products using DNA barcoding , 2015 .

[5]  S. Mariani,et al.  Current methods for seafood authenticity testing in Europe : is there a need for harmonisation? , 2014 .

[6]  L. Guardone,et al.  DNA barcoding reveals commercial and health issues in ethnic seafood sold on the Italian market , 2015 .

[7]  Sara M. Handy,et al.  A single-laboratory validated method for the generation of DNA barcodes for the identification of fish for regulatory compliance. , 2011, Journal of AOAC International.

[8]  D. Janzen,et al.  Use of DNA barcodes to identify flowering plants. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[9]  R. Rao,et al.  DNA Markers for Food Products Authentication , 2014 .

[10]  P. Galli,et al.  DNA barcoding reveals fraudulent substitutions in shark seafood products: The Italian case of “palombo” (Mustelus spp.) , 2010 .

[11]  L. Manning,et al.  Food Safety, Food Fraud, and Food Defense: A Fast Evolving Literature. , 2016, Journal of food science.

[12]  Andrea Galimberti,et al.  Emerging DNA-based technologies to characterize food ecosystems , 2015 .

[13]  M. Gowland,et al.  Food allergy, a summary of eight cases in the UK criminal and civil courts: effective last resort for vulnerable consumers? , 2015, Journal of the science of food and agriculture.

[14]  Paola Valentini,et al.  Gold nanoparticles for naked-eye DNA detection: smart designs for sensitive assays , 2013 .

[15]  A. Galimberti,et al.  DNA barcoding as a new tool for food traceability , 2013 .

[16]  Jeremy R. deWaard,et al.  Biological identifications through DNA barcodes , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[17]  Steven G Newmaster,et al.  DNA barcoding detects contamination and substitution in North American herbal products , 2013, BMC Medicine.

[18]  Robert C. Edgar,et al.  MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput. , 2004, Nucleic acids research.

[19]  Jewell D Washington,et al.  Potential use of DNA barcodes in regulatory science: applications of the Regulatory Fish Encyclopedia. , 2008, Journal of food protection.

[20]  P. Jain,et al.  Universal scaling of plasmon coupling in metal nanostructures: extension from particle pairs to nanoshells. , 2007, Nano letters.

[21]  K. Everstine,et al.  Economically motivated adulteration (EMA) of food: common characteristics of EMA incidents. , 2013, Journal of food protection.

[22]  P. Pompa,et al.  A Universal Polymerase Chain Reaction Developer. , 2016, Angewandte Chemie.

[23]  J. Spink,et al.  Development and application of a database of food ingredient fraud and economically motivated adulteration from 1980 to 2010. , 2012, Journal of food science.

[24]  R. Rosa,et al.  Seafood traceability: current needs, available tools, and biotechnological challenges for origin certification. , 2015, Trends in biotechnology.

[25]  Ranjani R. Starr.  Too little, too late: ineffective regulation of dietary supplements in the United States. , 2015, American journal of public health.