N-Glycan Profile as a Tool in Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Meat Adulteration

Adulteration of meat and meat products causes concerns to consumers. It is necessary to develop novel robust and sensitive methods that can authenticate the origin of meat by qualitative and quantitative means to minimize the drawbacks of the existing methods. This study has shown that the protein N-glycosylation profiles of different meats are species specific and thus can be used for meat authentication. Based on the N-glycan pattern, the investigated five meat species (beef, chicken, pork, duck, and mutton) can be distinguished by principal component analysis, and partial least square regression was performed to build a calibration and validation model for the prediction of adulteration ratio. Using this method, beef samples adulterated with a lower-value duck meat could be detected down to the addition ratio as low as 2.2%. The most distinguishing N-glycans from beef and duck were elucidated for the detailed structures.