DNA可以鉴定食物真伪?

NYC High Schoolers Find Fake Food Labeling With DNABefore you pay big money for caviar, check with two New York City high school students. Brenda Tan and Matt Cost worked with DNA barcoding experts at Rockefeller University and other researchers at the American Museum of Natural History to identify hundreds of food samples, assorted hairs and animal bits in their neighborhood. The Trinity School seniors discovered 95 different species of animal and 11 cases of fraudulent food labeling. Their findings appear in the January issue of the journal BioScience. 

下次在买鱼子酱之前，记得咨询下纽约市的2名高中学生：布伦丹谭和马特考斯特，他们与洛克菲勒大学的DNA测序专家及美国自然历史博物馆的研究人员合作的研究成果发表在《生物科学》杂志一月刊上，这2位三一学校的高中生鉴定几百种食物样品，并把他们在其邻里周边搜集来的毛发和动物颗粒进行分类，发现了95种动物和11起食物造假事件。

The professional researchers provided DNA sequences for the samples the students collected. The kids then checked the sequences against the database at barcodinglife.org

专业的研究人员为收集来的样品进行了DNA测序，然后由这2位同学把测得的序列与网站barcodinglife.org上的数据库进行比对。

The high schoolers found everything from pigeons and Pomeranians to an invasive latrine fly and what looks to be at least a new subspecies of cockroach. A supposed sheep's milk cheese was actually from cows. And alleged sturgeon caviar was just cheap Mississippi paddlefish eggs. But there was good news: all eight classmates who provided hair for the study turned out to be human.

结果，2名学生发现了很多动物的DNA序列，像鸽子、博美犬、极具攻击性的灰腹厕蝇和一种看起来像是新的蟑螂亚种的东西等。他们还发现了有些人用牛奶来冒充羊奶奶酪、用便宜的密西西比白鲟鱼籽来做所谓的鲟鳇鱼子酱。当然也有好消息了：8名同学提供的头发被证实确实是人的毛发！

-Adam Hinterthuer.