The Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) represents a multi-billion dollar black-market industry whereby wild species are illegally taken from their natural environment and sold. A common question asked by wildlife forensic scientists pertains to species and/or genus identity, which currently requires multi-step processing. Our work details the development of three HyBeacon® probes, used for the presumptive detection of rhinoceros, pangolin and key target species in the Panthera genus. The approach can be performed in a single tube using melt curve analysis and provide rapid assessment of sample identity. Using synthetic DNA of representative species, early data suggest the approach is sensitive enough to achieve species identification with <10 cells. Future development and assay validation can allow the rapid screening of multiple seized items before confirmatory DNA sequencing.

中文翻译：

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开发用于法医检测Panthera，犀牛和穿山甲物种的HyBeacon®探针。

非法野生生物贸易（IWT）代表着数十亿美元的黑市产业，其中野生生物被非法从其自然环境中非法获取并出售。野生生物法医提出的一个常见问题与物种和/或属的身份有关，目前需要多步处理。我们的工作详细介绍了三种HyBeacon®探针的开发，这些探针用于推定检测Panthera属中的犀牛，穿山甲和主要靶标物种。该方法可使用熔融曲线分析在单个试管中进行，并提供样品身份的快速评估。使用代表性物种的合成DNA，早期数据表明该方法足够灵敏，可以用<10个细胞进行物种鉴定。