Aptamer-based biosensors for food safety analysis
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Zeinab Nourbakhsh,1,* Ghasem Najafpour,2
1. Babol Noushivani University of Technology
2. Babol Noushivani University of Technology
- Introduction: Food safety is a key factor for achieving public health. Food contaminants such as mycotoxins, pathogens, antibiotic residues and pesticides are major sources of human exposure. Consequently, development of a sensitive, rapid, user friendly and cost effective analytical methods are needed for food safety monitoring. Biosensors have been introduced as on-site promising tools which overcome limitations of the conventional analytical methods.
- Methods: As one of the innovative types of biosensors, aptamer based biosensors are efficient detection platforms for food contaminants. Aptamers as selective recognition elements are single stranded sequence of RNA or DNA, which can selected from SELEX process. Aptamers can bind to targets with high affinity through hydrogen bonding, electrostatic and van der waals interactions. High affinity, chemical stability and easy synthesis are the advantages of aptamers over antibodies. Using aptasensors for determination of veterinary drugs such as antibiotics and hormones have been reported. Aptamers have been recognized as innovative common recognition elements for detection of tetracyclines, β-lactames and sulfamethazine in milk, honey and chicken. Also, aptamer based biosensors for selective detection of aflatoxins in food samples have been reported in several studies.
- Results: The signal changes which generate from biological reactions can be measured using electrochemical techniques. Depend on these measurable parameters, electrochemical biosensors are divided to voltammetric, amperometric, potentiometric and impedimetric. The important factors which influence on biosensor performance are electrode surface, immobilization method and detection technique. Employing nanomaterial engineering in recent years led to improve the sensitivity of electrodes as transduction elements. Carbon nanomaterials, metal nanomaterials and magnetic nanoparticles are the most applied ones for biosensor fabrication.
- Conclusion: Food industry need low cost, rapid and precise detection devices for food analysis. Aptamer based biosensors are promising devices for detection of food contaminants. Selectivity, stability, sensitivity and practicability are the factors that denote the performance of a biosensor. Performance of sensitive biosensors which can detect multiple analytes in multiplex systems are trends in future studies.
- Keywords: food saftey, biosensor, aptamer, antibiotic residues, aflatoxins
