Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia
  • 2 Division of Pharmaceutical Analysis and Medicinal Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Campus III Paingan, Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta 55282, Indonesia
  • 3 Department of Food Science and Technology, IPB University, Bogor 16680, Indonesia
  • 4 Faculty of Pharmacy, Andalas University, Padang 25175, Indonesia
  • 5 Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia
Molecules, 2022 Nov 29;27(23).
PMID: 36500423 DOI: 10.3390/molecules27238325

Abstract

Adulteration of high-quality meat products using lower-priced meats, such as pork, is a crucial issue that could harm consumers. The consumption of pork is strictly forbidden in certain religions, such as Islam and Judaism. Therefore, the objective of this research was to develop untargeted metabolomics using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) combined with chemometrics for analysis of pork in beef meatballs for halal authentication. We investigated the use of non-targeted LC-HRMS as a method to detect such food adulteration. As a proof of concept using six technical replicates of pooled samples from beef and pork meat, we could show that metabolomics using LC-HRMS could be used for high-throughput screening of metabolites in meatballs made from beef and pork. Chemometrics of principal component analysis (PCA) was successfully used to differentiate beef meatballs and pork meatball samples. Partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) clearly discriminated between halal and non-halal beef meatball samples with 100% accuracy. Orthogonal projection to latent structures-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) perfectly discriminated and classified meatballs made from beef, pork, and a mixture of beef-pork with a good level of fitness (R2X = 0.88, R2Y = 0.71) and good predictivity (Q2 = 0.55). Partial least square (PLS) and orthogonal PLS (OPLS) were successfully applied to predict the concentration of pork present in beef meatballs with high accuracy (R2 = 0.99) and high precision. Thirty-five potential metabolite markers were identified through VIP (variable important for projections) analysis. Metabolites of 1-(1Z-hexadecenyl)-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, acetyl-l-carnitine, dl-carnitine, anserine, hypoxanthine, linoleic acid, and prolylleucine had important roles for predicting pork in beef meatballs through S-line plot analysis. It can be concluded that a combination of untargeted metabolomics using LC-HRMS and chemometrics is promising to be developed as a standard analytical method for halal authentication of highly processed meat products.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.