Meat Species Identification by Protein Profiling and Spectral Fingerprinting Using MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometer

摘要

Are you sure what you are eating? The horse meat scandal in Europe is vivid in our minds. Adulterated meat is a worldwide problem. Traditionally meat authentication was usually achieved by DNA-based methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that rely on species-specific sequence markers. More recently, protein-based methods that employ LC-MS to detect specific peptides have also been developed. However, these methods are either expensive or time-consuming, and likely unsuitable for surveillance. We thus aim to develop a rapid and inexpensive method for meat authentication based on protein profiling on the easily parallelized MALDI-TOF platform. Proteins from meat are extracted and analysed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. The entire protein profile recorded in the mass spectra will be stored in a spectral library and used as fingerprints to identify unknown meat products by spectral similarity. Meat samples of pork, beef and goat were prepared to test the libraries, all of them were correctly identified with high confidence.