Identification of Species in Commercial Frozen Shrimp Meat in Taiwan.

Attempts were made to identify species in commercial frozen shrimp meat samples collected in Taiwan. First, approximately 20 fresh specimens of each of the 10 common commercial shrimp species were identified by morphological methods. A 401 to 407-bp fragment of the cytochrome b gene was amplified from the shrimp meat by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using the primer pair UCYTB151F/270R. By comparing the gene sequences and PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) maps obtained using the endonucleases Alu I, Ssp I and Hae III, the 10 species of shrimp could be successfully differentiated. The PCR-RFLP method was proved applicable for the species identification of 10 marketed shrimp samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]