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Reset A handheld device originally used to diagnose tumors on contact could also be used to prevent fish and meat fraud or mislabeling, a global problem that is causing headaches all around the world. Image credit: The researchers Abby Gatmaitan, a chemistry graduate student from the University of Texas, discovered that the MasSpec Pen – a mass spectrometry-based cancer detection and diagnosis system – could be used to sample raw meat or fish and identify the species it comes from. She tested the “pen” and it took less than 15 seconds for each of them. This could be big news because the scale of the problem is surprisingly large. According to some estimates, as much as 50% of all sold seafood is mislabeled, and while other estimates have more conservative figures, it’s still an important problem. ....
Fraudulent Fish Foiled by Cancer-Catching Pen Seafood is often falsely labeled, but a handheld device can tell tuna from tilapia in seconds Print Seafood fraud is widespread. One study found that, for commonly mislabeled species such as snapper and tuna, 87 and 59 percent of samples, respectively, were incorrectly identified. Credit: Getty Images Advertisement When chemistry graduate student Abby Gatmaitan first visited the University of Texas at Austin on a recruiting tour, she learned about the MasSpec Pen a handheld device that scientists there were developing to diagnose tumors on contact. “I knew that was where I wanted to do my research,” she says. Shortly after joining the lab, she realized that if the pen could categorize human tissue, it would probably also work on other animals. ....