COIBar-RFLP Molecular Strategy Discriminates Species and Unveils Commercial Frauds in Fishery Products.

The DNA analysis is the best approach to authenticate species in seafood products and to unveil frauds based on species substitution. In this study, a molecular strategy coupling Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) DNA barcoding with the consolidated methodology of Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms (RFLPs), named COIBar-RFLP, was applied for searching pattern of restriction enzyme digestion, useful to discriminate seven different fish species (juveniles of and sold in Italy as "bianchetto" and sold as "rossetto"; icefish ; European perch, and the Nile Perch, striped catfish, ). A total of 30 fresh and frozen samples were processed for DNA barcoding, analyzed against a barcode library of COI sequences retrieved from GenBank, and validated for COIBar-RFLP analysis.