A PCR method for rapid detection of peanut ingredients in food

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea) often causes severe allergic reactions in sensitive people. Agglutinin is known to be one of the allergenic proteins in peanut. A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method was developed to detect peanut ingredients in food using a primer pair corresponding to the agglutinin gene. This primer pair enabled PCR amplification of specific regions of agglutinin DNA from peanut, but not from 11 other nuts, beans, and cereals (pistachio, almond, sunflower seed, pine nut, walnut, soybean, black bean, kidney bean, azuki bean, rice, and black rice). The proposed PCR method successfully identified all of the 6 processed foods containing peanut whereas 13 other processed foods, which don't declare peanuts as an ingredient, were all negative. The detection limit of this method for purified peanut DNA was 100 pg/reaction. The sensitivity of this method was sufficient to detect peanut DNA in soybean DNA mixture which had been spiked with 0.1% peanut DNA.