Porcine DNA Detection in Finished Meat Products Using Different Mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA) on Polymerase Chain reaction

Abstract

This study was conducted to detect the presence of porcine DNA in meat products in the market using different mitochondrial (mt) DNA on conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Porcine DNA detection in meat products was tested due to some issues associated with the adulteration of food products in Malaysia. This is an important issue especially for Halal authentication which is required for some religious practices such as in Islam and Hinduism. Many techniques have been developed for determining the Halal status of food products. In this paper, Polymerase Chain Reaction method was used to detect the presence of porcine DNA in meat products. Positive and negative controls were always present for each batch of extraction. DNA of raw pork meat was used as a positive control while nucleus free water is used as negative control. DNA of meat products was amplified by using species-specific primer namely mtATP6 with band size of 83-bp and Pork1 and Pork2 with band size of 531-base pair (bp) mitochondrial (mt) DNA D-loop primer to detect pork species. The present study demonstrated that none of the samples were contaminated with porcine residuals but selected samples with pork meat were positive. The species-specific PCR amplification yielded excellent results for identification of pork derivatives in food products and it is a potentially reliable and suitable technique in routine food analysis for Halal certification.