Comparison of heat-stable peptides using a multiple-reaction monitoring method to identify beef muscle tissue

Abstract

Nowadays, proteomics is widely used as an analytical control method. A new method for determining animal tissue species-specificity based on a combination of two effective methods of food analysis, liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS), was used in this work. Using this approach, it became possible to detect peptides. This work presents a comparison of species-specific, heat-stable peptides for the identification of beef. The objects of the study were native and boiled model mixtures containing beef with concentrations of 8% (w/w) and 16% (w/w). Pork was also added to the recipe to control for false-positive results. A high-performance liquid chromatography technique with mass spectrometric detection (LC-MS/MS) was used. Analysis of finished samples takes 25 minutes and is adapted to detect marker peptides. From the processing of the obtained data, three beef marker peptides were identified that were accepted as the best candidates. Two peptide prototypes, NDMAAQYK and YLEFISDAIIHVLHAK from the myoglobin protein and SNVSDAVAQSAR from the triosephosphate isomerase protein, were selected as potential biomarkers. For all samples, the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) was set above 10. Temperature was not found to affect the structure and detection of marker peptides in samples with a muscle tissue concentration of 8% (w/w) at p <0.05. This approach is universally applicable for comparing biomarkers of other types of meat and to identify the most suitable candidates.