A Rapid Method for the Identification of Fresh and Processed Species against Frauds.

The commercialization of porgies or seabreams of the family has greatly increased in the last decade, and some valuable species have become subject to seafood substitution. DNA regions currently used for fish species identification in fresh and processed products belong to the mitochondrial (mt) genes cytochrome b (), cytochrome c oxidase I (), and . However, these markers amplify for fragments with lower divergence within and between some species, failing to provide informative barcodes. We adopted comparative mitogenomics, through the analysis of complete mtDNA sequences, as a compatible approach toward studying new barcoding markers. The intent is to develop a specific and rapid assay for the identification of the common pandora , a sparid species frequently subject to fraudulent replacement. The genetic diversity analysis (Hamming distance, -genetic distance, gene-by-gene sequence variability) between 16 sparid DNA genomes highlighted the discriminating potential of a 291 bp gene fragment. A pair of species-specific primers were successfully designed and tested by end-point and real-time PCR, achieving amplification only in among several fish species. The use of the barcoding marker provides a rapid presence/absence method for the identification of .