Analysis of Nucleic Acid Related Substances in Fish Meat and Automatic Calculation of Freshness (K Value) Using Multi-Data Report Function

Introduction

Compared to the muscle tissue of livestock animals, the flesh of fish or shellfish is known to decay more rapidly due to its softness and high water content. Accurately determining the freshness of these fish and shellfish is extremely important in terms of food safety and security. Changes in the concentration of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in animals' muscles are widely used as an indicator of muscle freshness. Moreover, the so-called K-value is often used as a method for the freshness evaluation of fish. In recent years, cases have been reported of allergies developing from histamine food poisoning. When a red fish such as tuna decays, histamine (a metabolite of histidine, which is a kind of amino acid) accumulates in high concentrations. Although it is possible to detect histamine using HPLC, the pretreatment (derivatization) is complicated, and a large system is required for automatic pretreatment. Therefore, it is useful to be able to measure the state of decay simply by analyzing ATP-related compounds using the NexeraTM LC system with a simple configuration. In this report, we use the K-value to determine the freshness of tuna from HPLC analysis and demonstrate the use of the multi- data report function.

April 4, 2019 GMT