Specific primers and probes were designed using a portion of the shark mitochondrial genome to establish a novel method for the detection of components of shark-origin in shark fin products, in order to determine product quality. The results of this study indicated that this method had good species specificity, as well as a high sensitivity of 0.01 ng/?L DNA concentration or 0.1% (m/m) weight. This method was then combined with a detection method developed for the identification of plant-origin genes; this combined method was used to examine 25 shark fin products available in the market (randomly chosen). The results of this analysis revealed the presence of shark-origin components (and not plant-origin components) in 18 samples, and of plant-origin components (and not shark-origin components) in the remaining 7 samples; this indicated that the latter 7 samples were imitation fin products prepared using plant ingredients. The method established in this study is fast, sensitive, and simple, and suitable for the rapid detection of shark-origin components in shark fin products available in the market.
