Luxury Animal or Woolen Fibres, - Identification and Distinction

Abstract

The fraudulent adulteration of luxury fibres, like cashmere and the like, with cheaper animal fibres, like wool, is a problem for both the manufacturer and the consumer. Usually fibre compositions were identified by fibre diameter and observations of the scale structure of hundreds of fibres, manually and using microscopes, what was a time-consuming task. One of answers to the problem of establishing the identity of these fibres was found in the analysis of their deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which allows the genetic material of the fibre to be examined and provides a positive identification. The discovery of DNA in animal hair shafts was a breakthrough in this field, which enables the use of DNA markers to differentiate animal fibres. A DNA dot blot analysis using specific probes to distinguish between DNA extracted from raw wool and luxury fibres has been established. This conventional method of DNA hybridization technique requires a higher amount of good quality DNA, that is often scarce in the processed animal fibres. However, polymerase chain reaction based DNA markers, require a very small quantity of samples and a moderate DNA quality, what could be a suitable alternative for processed animal fibres.