Species identification of formed fishery products and high pressure-treated fish by electrophoresis: a collaborative study

The suitability and reliability of three electrophoretic methods of fish species identification, urea isoelectric focusing (IEF), sodium dodecyl sulfate poly-acrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and native IEF, were evaluated on formed fish fillets and high pressure fish flesh by a collaborative study among four institutes. By following optimized standard operation procedures, the protein patterns of processed fish were compared to patterns of raw reference samples. The method to use depended of the effect of processing on the protein pattern. The proteins obtained from formed products were not denatured and therefore any of the three methods proved to be adequate, with a preference for native IEF which had a better discriminatory power for the species used. The high pressure process altered the proteins, and so only urea IEF and SDS-PAGE methods could be used. For these products, the chosen method should then be the one with the better discriminating power for the species being examined.