SUPREME-Project: Identification of speciality animal fibres using DNA profiling

摘要

Accurate identification of animal fibres is important to help combat adulteration or false declaration and ensure adherence to international trading agreements. Stringent garment labelling requirements (e.g. within the EC) underline the need for exactanalytical methods but these can be difficult to achieve, particularly for materials of biological origin. A breakthrough in speciality fibre analysis was made in the late 1980s when it was demonstrated that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) was not only present in hair roots but could easily be extracted from animal hair shafts. This was an important development since some fibres such as wool are shorn rather than combed. DNA of sufficient quality to be used as a template in DNA hybridisation studies has been successfully isolated from scoured, bleached and dyed fabrics as well as from raw fibre samples leading to the development of DNA-based speciation tests at BTTG for the objective analysis of animal fibres and fibre blends. The test protocols are basedon the detection of specific DNA sequences within the genome of each individual species. Polymerase Chain Reaction primer sets have been designed for each animal species in question and these can then be used to amplify specific DNA products from fibresamples. To support the production and commercialisation of Camelid fibre appropriate quality control methods are being developed under the SUPREME project. Primer sets have been developed for the differentiation of Camelid from non-Camelid fibres (e.g.cashmere, wool, yak, angora, camel) using mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequence data.