Chapter 19 - Proteomic Identification of Commercial Fish Species

Abstract

Fish species substitution is an important concern in international fishery markets due to increases in international trade, per capita seafood consumption, and the production of processed foods. Conventionally, the authentication of commercial fish species is performed by analyzing morphological characters, but this is unfeasible for processed seafood products. Although several DNA and protein molecular markers have been developed over the last two decades, new strategies for fish identification are emerging due to recent developments in proteomic methodologies. This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of the application of proteomics to the identification of commercial fish species. Two sequential phases of the proteomic pipeline that are applied in our laboratory, the discovery phase and the target-driven phase, are presented. The most rapid method (<2h) that has been described to date for identification of fish species in food products, which is based on the monitoring of several species-specific peptide biomarkers using LC-MS/MS in the SMIM mode, is also presented.