Identification of European eel juvenile by using PCR-RFLP

SUMMARY Species discrimination is crucial in illegal transport of CITES species. A recent case at the Hungarian International Airport (Budapest, Hungary) where over half a million of individuals of unidentified juvenile eel (Anguilla sp.) were seized also called for a prompt decision and reflected the importance of rapid techniques identification. Instead of morphological investigation, that could be misleading and unapplicable in certain juvenile developmental stage, molecular methods proved to be the eligible way of eel species discrimination. A nuclear marker, a 100bp fragment of the FSH gene was used to distinguish the European eel (A. anguilla) and Japanese eel (A. japonica) in glass eel stage using PCR-RFLP technique. Molecular method based on nuclear markers enables a wide range of identification as species discrimination of any developmental stage and also hybrid testing