As botanical products move through the supply chain, they often lose any resemblance to their original form. Leaves become powders, fungi become extracts and blends blur into one another—yet the burden of proving what’s actually inside has never been higher.
As LeafWorks Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Kerin Law highlighted in her 2025 AOAC International presentation, this is exactly where DNA offers what traditional methods can’t.
Traditional tools for identification, such as microscopy, macroscopy and chemistry-based assays, provide useful information, but each has its limitations, as laid out in previous blogs. Adding tools to the testing toolbox when available is the ultimate way to obtain comprehensive answers for your products.
The genetic code of the species that go into your products provides a stable, unique and reproducible molecular signature that does not shift with age, environment, processing or growth stage. This consistency is why forensics and environmental testing depend on DNA, and why the rest of biological testing increasingly does as well. It gives manufacturers and regulators an identity anchor that doesn’t change when everything else does.
Universality: DNA Works Across the Full Spectrum of Botanical Products
DNA is built from the same universal genetic code across living organisms: adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T) and guanine (G). What changes from organism to organism is the arrangement of that code, creating genetic signatures that can be used to reliably distinguish one species from another.
That common molecular language makes DNA broadly useful for species identification across plants, fungi and other organisms. Whether the question involves lion’s mane, ginkgo or multiple botanical species in a complex formulation, the underlying principle remains the same: Genetic sequences provide information that can be compared against validated reference data to determine what species are present.
Uniqueness: DNA Distinguishes Identity To A New Level
Genomic markers can be designed to answer identity questions at increasingly specific levels, distinguishing species, cultivars, individuals, geographic origins or trait variants, depending on the question being asked. These markers target unique regions of DNA, enabling consistent identification and clearer answers about what’s what.
That level of resolution is especially important because closely related species often share similar chemical profiles, or when manufacturers need to answer more specific questions about identity. Some metabolites used for identification—such as berberine, ganodermic acid and chlorogenic acid—are found across multiple species in commerce, which can make chemistry-based identification challenging. DNA offers a precise way to distinguish materials that may otherwise look similar.
Stability: DNA Remains Intact Through Cultivation and Processing
Chemical markers can degrade or become difficult to interpret as germplasm ages or can change depending on how material is cured and undergoes processing, while morphological traits disappear entirely once botanicals are heavily processed or extracted. DNA can also degrade under certain conditions, but smaller, detectable fragments often remain even when other signals have faded. You just need to use methods that can utilize those smaller fragments, such as LeafWorks’ Botanical DNA ID Tests.
Because genetic sequences themselves do not change with temperature, stress, infection, age or tissue type, DNA-based assays can still identify botanical material from blended, processed or imperfect samples.
That makes DNA particularly valuable for real-world supply chains, where ingredients rarely arrive as pristine whole plants or fungi but instead appear as powders, extracts, processed products and blended materials.
Reproducibility: Objective Results That Hold Across Labs
Unlike other approaches that have levels of subjectivity to their analysis, DNA produces objective results that remain consistent across analysts, instruments, and laboratories.
When methods and databases are validated, DNA test outputs deliver uniform answers, which is why qPCR kits are part of so many established analytical methods. Anyone can perform these kits anywhere on the same material and get the same binary outcome beyond subjective interpretation.
Sensitivity: Detecting What’s Present, Even in Trace Amounts
DNA testing is exceptionally sensitive. It allows for the detection of extremely small quantities of a species’ DNA, even when it appears only as a trace component in a mixed or degraded sample.
The LeafWorks Lion’s Mane DNA ID Test, for example, can detectHericium erinaceusat a fraction of a nanogram per microliter—a level of sensitivity especially valuable for confirming label claims, identifying adulterants, verifying substrate presence in fungi-based products or checking for botanical contaminants.
At that level of sensitivity, brands don’t have to rely on assumptions or supplier assurances; they can make confident, defensible calls about what’s actually in their products, even when the evidence is nearly invisible.
The Most Important Advantage: DNA Can Work on Real Samples, Not Ideal Ones
Identity testing must hold up in the real world to be useful. Botanical products often contain fillers, excipients, blends, different plant or fungal parts, substrates and processed materials.
LeafWorks builds its methods around this reality.
While other DNA methods struggle in this aspect, every LeafWorks assay is anchored in thousands of authenticated botanical reference materials, utilizing methods that can handle degraded DNA, and are validated to work in processed product types to ensure accuracy with the complex, imperfect samples that actually move through the supply chain.
Outlook: Bringing DNA Into the Botanical Fold
As Dr. Law noted in her AOAC presentation, the dietary supplement industry is in DNA-adoption mode. Wider use depends on education of LeafWorks’ comprehensive testing options now available, and on demonstrating the strengths and appropriate uses of our modern genomic methods alongside chemistry and microscopy. As a powerful orthogonal method, our DNA testing approach complements those testing methods, adding an efficient first step or an additional layer of identity verification.
Upcoming updates to the AOAC BIDSI guidelines will also help clarify DNA marker validation requirements, giving manufacturers and labs a clearer framework for integrating genetic testing into their workflows. LeafWorks is proud to have submitted comments to ensure these traditionally chemistry focused guidelines can work for DNA as well.
Let’s be clear: DNA is not replacing chemistry or microscopy. It’s completing the picture. It bridges the gaps left by traditional methods, offering stability, specificity, universality, reproducibility and sensitivity across a wide range of product types. Plus, it is highly convenient, producing multitudes of accurate species IDs from one assay.
In a supply chain where products rarely resemble the original organism, LeafWorks’ DNA approach provides the reliable identity anchor the industry has been missing.
LeafWorks built its Botanical DNA ID Tests to make that rigor accessible and actionable for manufacturers of all sizes. When accuracy matters—and in this industry, it always does—LeafWorks’ DNA testing is the method capable of delivering it.
