Camerini Serena, Montepeloso Emanuela, Casella Marialuisa, Crescenzi Marco, Marianella Rosa Maria, Fuselli Fabio
Department of Cell Biology and Neurosciences, Higher Institute of Health (ISS), Viale Regina Elena, 299, 00161 Rome, Italy.
Ministry of Agriculture Food and Forest Policies, Department of Central Inspectorate for Food and Feed Quality Protection and Fraud Repression, Central Laboratory of Rome, Via del Fornetto, 85, 00149 Rome, Italy.
Food Chem. 2016 Apr 15;197 Pt B:1240-8. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2015.11.073. Epub 2015 Nov 14.
Ricotta cheese is a typical Italian product, made with whey from various species, including cow, buffalo, sheep, and goat. Ricotta cheese nominally manufactured from the last three species may be fraudulently produced using the comparatively cheaper cow whey. Exposing such food frauds requires a reliable analytical method. Despite the extensive similarities shared by whey proteins of the four species, a mass spectrometry-based analytical method was developed that exploits three species-specific peptides derived from β-lactoglobulin and α-lactalbumin. This method can detect as little as 0.5% bovine whey in ricotta cheese from the other three species. Furthermore, a tight correlation was found (R(2)>0.99) between cow whey percentages and mass spectrometry measurements throughout the 1-50% range. Thus, this method can be used for forensic detection of ricotta cheese adulteration and, if properly validated, to provide quantitative evaluations.
乳清干酪是一种典型的意大利产品，由包括牛、水牛、绵羊和山羊在内的各种物种的乳清制成。名义上由后三种物种制成的乳清干酪可能会被欺诈性地使用相对便宜的牛乳清生产。揭露此类食品欺诈行为需要一种可靠的分析方法。尽管这四种物种的乳清蛋白有广泛的相似性，但还是开发了一种基于质谱的分析方法，该方法利用了源自β-乳球蛋白和α-乳白蛋白的三种物种特异性肽段。这种方法可以检测出其他三种物种的乳清干酪中低至0.5%的牛乳清。此外，在1%-50%的范围内，牛乳清百分比与质谱测量值之间发现了紧密的相关性（R²>0.99）。因此，这种方法可用于法医检测乳清干酪掺假，如果经过适当验证，还可用于提供定量评估。
