Isothermal amplification-based methods for assessment of microbiological safety and authenticity of meat and meat products

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) requires precise temperature control for detection of nucleic acids (NA) in biological samples. Hence, the requirement of thermo-cycler limits the application of PCR-based methods in low-resource settings. In isothermal reactions, the NA amplification process is completed at a single temperature with the help of enzymes hence there is no requirement of costly thermo-cyclers. Many isothermal NA amplification methods have been developed in recent years for detection of NA in food samples. In this review, we describe various isothermal NA amplification methods for detection of pathogens and animal species in meat and meat products, including loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), helicase-dependent amplification (HDA), cross-priming amplification (CPA), nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA), single primer isothermal amplification (SPIA), rolling circle amplification (RCA), and strand exchange amplification (SEA). New emerging tools that have been coupled with these isothermal techniques for rapid on-site detection are also discussed.