DNA Authentication of Raw Herbal Drugs for Industrial Quality Assurance

Many plant-based medicines are still prepared from plants collected from the wild, requiring routine testing to ensure their correct identity. Quality control of wild-harvested plant materials has typically involved morphological and chemical analysis, but both approaches have their limitations. DNA-based authentication assays could complement these techniques and are currently under development for incorporation into industrial quality assurance procedures for a number of commercial products. A general strategy for the design of a robust DNA authentication assay for routine testing has been established. Specimens of the commercial plant species and its potential adulterants are collected and a DNA barcode sequence library created. PCR primers are designed to informative sequence strings that can be used to distinguish a target species from others in the dataset. Primers designed to generate short amplicons can be optimized for multiplex PCR, quantitative PCR and high resolution melt curve (HRM) assays.