SBIR Phase I: A handheld sensor for seafood identification

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发技术，通过使批发商，餐馆和消费者能够在受控的实验室环境之外快速识别贴错标签的鱼产品，来防止海鲜欺诈。美国消费者在食用海鲜时，每三次就有一次会出现错误标签。更便宜和更容易获得的物种通常被交换为更高价值的鱼类，如金枪鱼，笛鲷和石斑鱼。这种替代发生在供应链的多个环节，从生产商/加工商到批发商再到餐馆。美国消费者每年为贴错标签的海鲜支付约320亿美元。此外，这种海产品可能会造成严重的健康问题，或抵消重点管理脆弱鱼类种群和非法捕捞的监管努力。目前的海产品鉴定工作不足以消除错误标签，因为它们需要受控的实验室环境和训练有素的人员。 一些便携式测试正在变得可用，但它们缺乏成本有效地筛选大量样品的能力。这里提出的平台将通过在45分钟内现场提供识别，并以低于现有技术的每份样品成本，实现更广泛的海鲜识别测试。SBIR第一阶段项目旨在通过开发一个快速便携的基于DNA的筛查平台来解决海鲜错误标签问题，从而实现准确的海鲜识别，以解决消费者，零售商和监管机构对海鲜错误标签的担忧。 待开发平台的关键组成部分是基于纳米孔的传感器技术，这是一种用于直接计数靶核酸的免扩增方法。初步结果表明，该技术能够以单核苷酸特异性区分石斑鱼和鲶鱼的DNA。该技术还实现了多重检测，用一个传感器区分36个序列。该项目将通过扩展多重策略以覆盖200多个序列，设计探针以区分20多个鱼类物种，然后通过在盲样中识别海鲜物种完成完整的商业原则证明，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to develop technology to prevent seafood fraud through enabling wholesalers, restaurants, and consumers to rapidly identify mislabeled fish product outside of controlled laboratory settings. U.S. consumers are subjected to mislabeling errors one out of every three times they consume seafood. Species that are cheaper and easier to source are commonly swapped for higher value fish such as tuna, snapper, and grouper. This substitution occurs at multiple points in the supply chain, from producers/processors to wholesalers to restaurants. U.S. consumers pay approximately $32 billion for mislabeled seafood on an annual basis. Additionally, this seafood may pose a serious health concern or counteract regulatory efforts focused on managing vulnerable fish populations and illegal fishing. Current seafood identification efforts are insufficient to eradicate mislabeling because they require controlled laboratory settings and highly trained personnel. A few portable tests are becoming available but they lack the ability to screen large numbers of samples cost-effectively. The platform proposed here will enable more widespread seafood identification testing by delivering identification within 45 minutes, on-site, and for a lower per sample cost than existing technologies. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to address seafood mislabeling by developing a fast and portable DNA-based screening platform to allow for accurate seafood identification to address concerns from consumers, retailers, and regulators regarding seafood mislabeling. The key component of the platform to be developed is a nanopore-based sensor technology, which is an amplification-free method for direct counting of target nucleic acids. It has been demonstrated in preliminary results that the technology is able to distinguish grouper DNA from catfish with single-nucleotide specificity. This technology also has achieved multiplexed detection, distinguishing 36 sequences with one sensor. This project will advance this detection assay towards a commercial-ready product by expanding the multiplexing strategy to cover 200+ sequences, designing probes to distinguish 20+ fish species, and then completing a full commercial proof-of-principle by identifying seafood species in blinded samples in work done on-site.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.