Food safety is a global health objective, and foodborne diseases represent a major crisis in health. Techniques that are simple and suitable for fast screening to detect and identify pathogenic factors in the food chain are vital to ensure food safety. At present, a variety of analytical methods have been reported for the detection of pathogenic agents. Whereas the sensitivity of detection and quantification are still important challenges, we expect major advances from new assay formats and synthetic bio-recognition elements, such as aptamers. Owing to the specific folding capability of aptamers in the presence of an analyte, aptasensors have substantially and successfully been exploited for the detection of a wide range of small and large molecules (e.g., toxins, antibiotics, heavy metals, bacteria, viruses) at very low concentrations. Here, we review the use of aptasensors for the development of highly sensitive and affordable detection tools for food analysis.
We report on a method for simultaneous detection of the pathogens Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Salmonella typhimurium. It is based on dual fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) from green-emitting quantum-dots (gQDs) and red-emitting quantum-dots (rQDs) as donors, and on novel amorphous carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) that act as acceptor. The gQDs were modified with an aptamer (Apt 1) recognizing V. parahaemolyticus, and the rQDs with an aptamer (Apt 2) recognizing S. typhimurium. The fluorescence of both QDs is strongly quenched in the presence of CNPs. However, on addition of the target analytes, the QDsaptamer-target complex is formed and quenching by CNPs is suppressed. The fluorescence of the QDs is linearly proportional to the concentration of the two pathogens in the range from 50 to 10 6 cfu·mL −1 , with detection limits as low as 25 cfu·mL −1 for V. parahaemolyticus, and of 35 cfu·mL −1 for S. typhimurium. The assay was applied to real food samples, and the results were consistent with the results obtained with plate counting methods. We presume that this strategy can be extended to the detection of other pathogenic bacteria and biomolecules by simply substituting the aptamer.
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