Evaluation of the Agilent Technologies Bioanalyzer-based DNA Fish Identification Solution

- Evaluates a PCR-RFLP technique using the CO1 gene for fish identification.
- Multiple representatives of each species were used.
- The technique is capable of providing an alternative to DNA sequencing.
- Some species had more than one RFLP pattern.
- Recommend users develop own libraries for species of interest.

A wide variety of DNA based methods have been developed to identify fish species, including those that employ a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) technique. One such method developed by Dooley, Sage, Clarke, Brown, and Garrett (2005) used amplification of a portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome B (cytB) gene, with a three enzyme digestion, visualized and identified using the Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer System. More recently this method was modified by Agilent Technologies to target a section of the cytochrome c oxidase 1 (CO1) gene, within the 655 base pair (bp) “barcoding” fragment, using a two enzyme digestion to increase sample throughput and to exploit publically available CO1 data generated through the Barcode of Life initiative (Mueller et al. 2015). Here we evaluate this method on fifteen different commercial fish species with five replicate specimens of each. DNA barcoding of the CO1 gene was used as an orthogonal confirmatory method and also to further understand the results found using the modified Agilent PCR-RFLP method.