Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used for centuries in the Orient to relieve or treat diseases. Its efficacy is now attracting worldwide attention. Chinese medicinal materials are traditionally identified by their organoleptic characteristics, such as the texture or the odor. To ensure consistency of quality and avoid misuse, reliable programs are urgently needed for authentication. Proper authentication also assists in the detection and conservation of endangered species. DNA molecules offer a more definitive means of authentication, as genetic composition is unique for each taxon and is less affected by age, physiological conditions and environmental factors. This book is the first of its kind to introduce and evaluate the molecular techniques that have been developed to authenticate Chinese medicinal materials.The contents of the book are divided into four parts. The first part reviews the current status of molecular authentication of Chinese medicinal materials. The second part describes the equipment and materials required for the work. In the third part, researchers in the field present the principles and step-by-step protocols for a wide spectrum of techniques used in the molecular authentication of TCM. The last part provides an overview of this field.

Contents: Molecular Markers in Chinese Medicinal Materials (P-C Shaw et al.); Methodology and Equipment for General Molecular Techniques (F C-F Yau & F-N Ngan); Authentication of Chinese Medicinal Materials by Polymerase Chain Reaction Using Arbitrarily Chosen Primers (H Cao et al.); Authentication of the Components from a Mixture of Herbal Materials (K-T Cheng); Authentication of Chinese Medicinal Materials by Sequence Characterised Amplified Region (J Wang et al.); Differentiation of Panax ginseng from P quinqueflius by Direct Amplification of Length Polymorphisms (W-Y Ha et al.); Differentiation of Panax ginseng from P quinquefolius by Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (W-Y Ha et al.); Authentication of Animal Medicinal Materials by DNA Molecular Markers (Y-Q Wang & K-Y Zhou); Authentication of Medicinal Dendrobium Species by the Internal Transcribed Spacer of Ribosomal DNA (D T-W Lau et al.); Authentication by DNA Sequencing of 5s rRNA and trnK Genes (H Mizukami); Authentication Based on 18S Ribosomal RNA Gene and matK Gene Sequences (K Komatsu); Outlook (P-C Shaw et al.).