METHOD FOR QUALITATIVE AND/OR QUANTITATIVE DETERMINATION OF GENDER, SPECIES, RACE AND/OR GEOGRAPHICAL ORIGIN OF BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS

摘要

The invention relates to a method for determining the gender, species, race and/or geographical origin of biological materials. Fibrillary structures such as feathers, down, scales, hair or horn are directly cleaved in an enzymatic and specific manner to form a pool of cleaved peptides, without previously rendering structure proteins soluble. A total hydrolysis forming amino acids is not carried out, neither is a special analyte sought. The pool of cleaved peptides obtained from fibrillary structure proteins is preferably subjected to MALDI-ToF-mass spectroscopy, without using any other separating or isolating techniques, and the mass spectrograms obtained are adjusted using reference mass spectrograms. Suitable specific mass peaks are used to quantify elements such as feathers, down, scales, horn and/or hair which are foreign to the species.