Syngene has announced that its G:Box EF gel documentation system is being used by a European analytical testing company to provide the rapid authentication of food contents.
Scientists at the analytical testing company, based in the UK, are using a G:Box EF imaging system to accurately analyse agarose gels containing PCR products of animal DNA stained with SYBR Safe dye.
This is helping them to detect any types of meat or fish that should not be in the food samples being tested.
A manager at the analytical testing company said: 'Processed foods can sometimes be adulterated using other types of fish or meat than those stated on the label.
'The scarcity and high demand for certain fish species can lead to substitution with cheaper ones for financial gain.
'To safeguard the public and help companies comply with food labelling regulations, it is our job to detect any possible adulteration with species not declared on the label.
'Using PCR primers for several animal species, we perform PCR on the DNA from processed products to determine what types of DNA are there.
'However, the amount of DNA we have to detect is often in the nanogram range and for our tests to be effective we need a sensitive fluorescence imager.
'Since the G:Box EF can easily detect 20ng of SYBR Safe-stained DNA, we routinely choose to use this system for our DNA detection,' he added.
