This type of service is commonly used to accurately verify the identity of seafood species in cases of product mislabelling, exploitation and illegal trafficking. This service can identify poisonous marine species and fish that have been genetically modified.
ACGT will provide Seafood ID services to a variety of sectors, from seafood suppliers to population biology researchers, to governmental regulatory agencies responsible for the enforcement of local and global fishing statutes. Each of these groups participates in the protection of sustained seafood harvesting.
At ACGT, species identification utilises the sequence analysis of the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase 1 (COX 1) gene. The COX 1 gene provides the greatest interspecies discriminatory power in a single gene.
The utility of COX 1 gene has been recognised by the US Food and Drug Administration, which has established this gene as a gold standard for seafood species identification.
Beginning with DNA extraction from the seafood sample, COX 1 gene is amplified through the polymerase chain reaction and analysed via DNA sequencing. The sequence obtained is profiled against public databases containing archived COX 1 sequences from thousands of marine species. Once a match is made, the percentage certainty of the identification is determined.
Source: ACGT
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