School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, 7 Baptist University Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong 999077, China.
Hong Kong Authentication Centre of Valuable Chinese Medicines, Hong Kong 999077, China.
Molecules. 2022 May 5;27(9):2945. doi: 10.3390/molecules27092945.
Edible bird's nest (EBN) is an expensive health food. There are many adulterants in the market. It remains challenging to discriminate EBN from its adulterants due to a lack of high-specificity markers. Besides, the current markers are confined to soluble fraction of EBN. Here, both soluble and insoluble fractions were analyzed by LC-QTOF-MS/MS. A total of 26 high-specificity peptides that were specific to EBN were selected as qualitative authentication markers. Among them, 10 markers can discriminate EBN from common adulterants, 13 markers discriminate white EBN from grass EBN/common adulterants, and 3 markers discriminate grass EBN from white EBN/common adulterants. Three of them, which showed high signal abundance (Peak area ≥ 10) and satisfactory linearity ( ≥ 0.995) with EBN references, were selected as the assay marker; and their peptide sequences were confidently identified by searching database/de novo sequencing. Based on these markers, a qualitative and quantitative analytical method was successfully developed and well-validated in terms of linearity, precision, repeatability, and accuracy. The method was subsequently applied to detect EBN products on the market. The results indicated that more than half of EBN products were not consistent with what the merchants claimed.
食用燕窝（EBN）是一种昂贵的保健品。市场上有许多掺杂物。由于缺乏高特异性标志物，很难将 EBN 与其掺杂物区分开来。此外，目前的标志物仅限于 EBN 的可溶部分。在这里，通过 LC-QTOF-MS/MS 对可溶部分和不可溶部分进行了分析。总共选择了 26 种对 EBN 具有特异性的高特异性肽作为定性鉴定标志物。其中，有 10 种标志物可将 EBN 与常见掺杂物区分开来，13 种标志物可将白燕与草燕/常见掺杂物区分开来，3 种标志物可将草燕与白燕/常见掺杂物区分开来。其中 3 种标志物具有较高的信号丰度（峰面积≥10）和令人满意的线性度（≥0.995）与 EBN 参考品，被选为检测标志物；并通过数据库搜索/从头测序对其肽序列进行了确认。基于这些标志物，成功开发并验证了一种定性和定量分析方法，该方法在线性度、精密度、重复性和准确性方面表现良好。该方法随后被应用于检测市场上的 EBN 产品。结果表明，超过一半的 EBN 产品与商家声称的不一致。
