Project:

An attempt at Determining the Species of Fish Eggs in Sushi through DNA Barcoding

Students:

Ying Wang, Yuran Chen, Yuyang Sun

School:

Shanghai Pinghe School; Wycombe Abbey School Changzhou; Chengdu ShiShi, Suzhou, China

Mentors:

Xinyue Wang

Abstract:

There are many different fish species whose eggs can be made into caviar. Traditional method of morphology isn't very effective at identifying the species of fish eggs. The objective of our research is to identify the species of fish eggs in sushi by DNA barcoding. DNA barcoding requires extraction of DNA and amplification of certain segment of genes. After DNA sequencing, the sample's DNA and known species' DNA in the database is aligned to identify the species of the sample. Our group used four methods, namely Rapid, Silica, Kit, and Chelex, to isolate DNA from our samples. After Polymerase Chain Reaction amplifies the COI gene in all of our samples, only one sample shown positive PCR result. However, its DNA sequence is far different from our hypothesis, and our group members try to be explain that fact. We suspect that the poor PCR quality could be a result of bad sample quality as well as property of fish eggs.

Poster:

Team samples: