Rapid identification of deer products by multiplex PCR assay

Abstract

Attempts were made to establish one-step multiplex PCR assay for the identification of the widely used species in deer products (sika deer, wapiti, red deer and reindeer). Primers were designed from tandem repeat region of D-loop and well-conserved region of 16S rDNA after alignment of the available sequences in the GenBank database. The primers generated specific fragments of 307bp in length for sika deer, 307 and 246bp for wapiti, 272bp for Tarim red deer, 230bp for red deer and 141bp for reindeer, respectively. The detection limit was 0.05ng for sika deer and wapiti, 0.1ng for Tarim red deer, 0.5ng for red deer and 0.02ng for reindeer. The results demonstrated that the fraudulent phenomenon is epidemic in the substitution of deer products, in especially antler, penis, foetus and tendon products. Hence, this multiplex PCR provided a useful and sensitive technique to identify the sources of deer products.