TIGER poachers and traditional doctors beware. There鈥檚 now a test that can detect even the tiniest trace of raw tiger bone in traditional East Asian medicines.
鈥淗opefully, the test can be used to bring some trial prosecutions,鈥� says Jon Wetton, head of the team at Britain鈥檚 Forensic Science Service in Birmingham. In several Asian countries, tiger bones are ground down and added to traditional remedies for arthritis, rheumatism and impotence, even though the CITES treaty bans all trade in tiger parts.
The test detects the unique version of the Cytochrome b gene that鈥檚 found in tigers鈥� mitochondria, the 鈥減owerhouses鈥� of cells. Each cell can contain up to 10,000 copies of the gene, so even when most of an animal鈥檚 DNA has been broken down, there should still be a few intact copies of the telltale gene around. Wetton鈥檚 team, whose results will be published in Forensic Science International, has proved that the test works for Bengal, Sumatran and Siberian tigers, the three major subspecies under threat.
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