Advances in the authentication of collagen products based on DNA technology

Collagenous products are making their way into consumer markets such as foods, nutraceuticals, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals increasingly. Collagen in a large family of proteins is ubiquitous in metazoan. The most effective way to identify biological samples including collagen is DNA technology indisputably. However, the DNA content of collagen mostly derived from connective tissue is relatively less, and commercial collagen products are usually subjected to some harsh treatments in the production process, which makes DNA damage more serious, thus tracing their origin becomes a huge challenge. At present, DNA enrichment mainly relies on silica based centrifugal columns after extraction by classical phenol chloroform method. For improving the amplification of DNA fragments, small amplicons are designed based on more stable mitochondrial genes, such as cytochrome b gene (cytb). In addition to conventional PCR for DNA amplification, some new PCR techniques have also been developed, such as DNA barcoding techniques, PCR-Southern hybridization and fluorescent PCR. These PCR techniques have their pros and cons, and are mainly used in the identification of gelatin at present. The development of a complete set of DNA authentication is of great significance for the control of collagen products quality and will contribute to sustainable development of collagen industry.