Cooking DNA: The effect of 'domestic' cooking methods on detection of GM potato

Abstract

The ability to detect GM material in otherwise unprocessed foods cooked using domestic methods is important should 'ready-to-eat' foods require labelling. This study addresses the issue of DNA degradation in foods as a result of cooking. A number of ‘domestic’ cooking methods were shown to affect the length of DNA sequences able to be PCR amplified from potato samples and the degree of degradation was treatment-specific. However, a. real-time PCR assay was developed and. GM material was positively identified in all cooked GM potato samples. This confirms that GM material should be able to be detected in otherwise unprocessed food samples cooked using domestic methods, even if the cooking process has partially degraded the DNA. Results indicate, however, that there may be implications of the cooking process on the ability to accurately quantify GM content in some cooked samples.