Project description:Seafood fraud has become a global emerging issue, threatening food security and safety. Adulteration, substitution, dilution, and incorrect labeling of seafood products are fraudulent practices that violate consumer safety. In this context, developing sensitive, robust, and high-throughput molecular tools for food and feed authentication is becoming crucial for regulatory purposes. Analytical approaches such as proteomics mass spectrometry have shown promise in detecting incorrectly labeled products. For the application of these tools, genome information is crucial, but currently, for marine species of commercial importance, such information is unavailable. However, when combining proteomic analysis with spectra library matching, commercially important fish species were successfully identified, differentiated, and quantified in pure muscle samples and mixtures, even when genome information was scarce. This study further tested the previously developed proteomic-based spectra library-based approach was further tested to differentiate 29 fish species from the North Sea in individual samples, laboratory-prepared mixtures, and commercial samples. For authenticating libraries generated from 29 fish species, fresh muscle samples from the fish samples were matched against the reference libraries. Species of the fresh fish samples were correctly authenticated using the spectra libraries generated from the 29 fish species. Furthermore, processed commercial products containing mixtures of two or three fish species were matched against these spectra libraries to test the accuracy and robustness of this method for authentication of fish species. The results indicated that the method is suitable for the authentication of fish species from highly processed samples such as fish cakes and burgers. Spectra libraries built from 29 fish species in the North Sea can efficiently tackle current and future challenges in feed and food authentication analyses when prospecting new resources in the Arctic.
Project description:Replacement of high-value fish species with cheaper varieties or mislabelling of food unfit for human consumption is a global problem violating both consumers’ rights and safety. For distinguishing fish species in pure samples, DNA approaches are available; however, authentication and quantification of fish species in mixtures remains a challenge. In the present study, a novel high-throughput shotgun DNA sequencing approach applying masked reference libraries was developed and used for authentication and abundance calculations of fish species in mixed samples. Results demonstrate that the analytical protocol presented here can discriminate and predict relative abundances of different fish species in mixed samples with high accuracy. In addition to DNA analyses, shotgun proteomics tools based on direct spectra comparisons were employed on the same mixture. Similar to the DNA approach, the identification of individual fish species and the estimation of their respective relative abundances in a mixed sample also were feasible. Furthermore, the data obtained indicated that DNA sequencing using masked libraries predicted species-composition of the fish mixture with higher specificity, while at a taxonomic family level, relative abundances of the different species in the fish mixture were predicted with slightly higher accuracy using proteomics tools. Taken together, the results demonstrate that both DNA and protein-based approaches presented here can be used to efficiently tackle current challenges in feed and food authentication analyses.
Project description:RNA-seq of heart tissue from 7 fish species, including four elasmobranchs (white shark, shortfin mako, great hammerhead, and yellow stingray) and three teleost species (swordfish, hogfish, and ocean surgeonfish) Raw sequence reads
Project description:We sequenced and assembled de novo the coding transcriptomes in four species of Notothenioid fish: Neopagetopsis ionah (Jonah’s ice fish), Pseudochaenichtys georgianus (South Georgia icefish), Harpagifer antarcticus (Antarctic spiny plunderfish) and Parachaenichthys charcoti (Charcot’s dragonfish). We sampled 1-4 individuals and 1-14 tissues (brain, white muscle, liver, head kidney, trunk kidney, skin, heart, red muscle, spleen, ovary, testis, whole blood, gill, red blood cells) in each species, depending on tissue availability.
Project description:In this study, female fathead minnows (FHM) were exposed to waterbourne phenanthrene (201.8 µg/L) or a solvent control for 7 weeks. Fish were tested for behavioral differences in a modified behavioral test prior to euthansia. Hypothalami were excised and stored for microarray analyses. Fish were exposed to one dose of phenanthrene. Female and male hypothalami were analyzed (n=8 per group, control vs. treatment); liver was also analyzed. N=7 control and 8 phenanthrene. In this study, a subchronic exposure to phenanthrene was investigated