%0 Journal Article
%T Forensically informative nucleotide sequencing (FINS) for the authentication of Chinese medicinal materials
%A Ming Li
%A Kalin Zhang
%A Paul But
%A Pang-Chui Shaw
%J Chinese Medicine
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1749-8546-6-42
%X World Health Organization estimates that 70-80% of the population in the developed countries have used some forms of alternative or complementary medicine [1]. Adulteration and misuse of Chinese medicinal products may be due to (a) accidental substitution due to the similarity of organoleptic characters, (b) inconsistent naming in local areas, (c) intentional substitution of expensive materials by less expensive items and (d) different use of substitutes in local areas. Conventional authentication methods based on organoleptic features and chemical constituents are influenced by various factors such as growing stages, environmental factors and post-harvest processing.Molecular techniques have been employed to authenticate medicinal materials since the mid 1990s [2]. Molecular techniques, such as DNA fingerprinting, DNA sequencing and DNA microarray, have been applied extensively to authenticate Chinese medicinal materials with a number of these applications having been patented and commercialized [3]. DNA sequencing can retrieve the maximum molecular information from a particular DNA region. Polymorphism of nucleotide sequences provides information to distinguish closely related species from distantly related species and between genuine medicinal materials and adulterants.Forensically informative nucleotide sequencing (FINS), a technique that combines DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis, is used to identify samples based on informative nucleotide sequences. The concept of FINS was first proposed by Bartlett and Davidson in 1992 to identify the origin of animal food products and has since been extensively applied in forensic investigations [4,5]. In the past decade, FINS has been applied to identify and authenticate the Chinese medicinal materials with species-specific DNA regions [6-8].This article describes the techniques and applications of FINS in authenticating Chinese medicinal materials.A defined DNA sequence from examined specimen is obtained and compare
%U http://www.cmjournal.org/content/6/1/42