Differentiation of Animal Hairs Using a Benchtop MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometer

The method of differentiation of animal hairs by detecting animal species-specific peptides using MALDI has been issued as an ISO standard. With this differentiation method, analysis is possible even with a single hair, and it can be applied not just to preventing fake cashmere but also to the differentiation of various animal hairs, including feathers and human hair, and inspection for inclusion of foreign matter in food.
In this article, we introduce an example of rapid successful differentiation of the species that animal hairs came from using the MALDI-8020 benchtop MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer.