Aptamer-Based Biosensor for Detection of Mycotoxins

Abstract

Mycotoxins are a large type of secondary metabolites produced by fungi that pose a great hazard to and cause toxic reactions in humans and animals. A majority of countries and regulators, such as the European Union, have established a series of requirements for their use, and they have also set maximum tolerance levels. The development of high sensitivity and a specific analytical platform for mycotoxins is much in demand to address new challenges for food safety worldwide. Due to the superiority of simple, rapid, and low-cost characteristics, aptamer-based biosensors have successfully been developed for the detection of various mycotoxins with high sensitivity and selectivity compared with traditional instrumental methods and immunological approaches. In this article, we discuss and analyze the development of aptasensors for mycotoxins determination in food and agricultural products over the last 11 years and cover the literatures from the first report in 2008 until the present time. In addition, challenges and future trends for the selection of aptamers toward various mycotoxins and aptasensors for multi-mycotoxins analyses are summarized. Given the promising development and potential application of aptasensors, future research studies made will witness the great practicality of using aptamer-based biosensors within the field of food safety.

An In-Silico Pipeline for Rapid Screening of DNA Aptamers against Mycotoxins: The Case-Study of Fumonisin B1, Aflatoxin B1 and Ochratoxin A

“…In general, methods allowing aptamer–target binding occurring free in solution, as the MST assay described herein, are the preferred ones because they remove any contribution from matrix binding responsible for reducing aptamer functionality. On the other hand, colorimetric assays, like the MBs one, are widely applied in quantitative detection of mycotoxins, especially in the real-sample applications [ 29 , 30 , 32 ].…”

“…To date, these aptamers have been integrated into several applications for mycotoxin analysis, including colorimetric, electrochemical, electrochemiluminescence and fluorescent biosensors, enzyme-linked assays and affinity chromatography approaches. Extensive reviews have been recently published covering the recent developments of aptamer-based biosensors for the detection of mycotoxins [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Label‐Free Colorimetric Biosensors Based on Aptamers and Gold Nanoparticles: A Critical Review

“…DNA aptamers are also single‐stranded and can selectively bind to a diverse range of analytes to form rigid binding complexes [29–31] . Simple and sensitive detection of aptamer binding is desirable [32–35] . Since aptamer binding can fold DNA and hide the bases, [29] the adsorption of aptamer/target complexes to AuNPs is also expected to be slow.…”

Immunoaffinity Extraction and Alternative Approaches for the Analysis of Toxins in Environmental, Food or Biological Matrices

“…Aptamers are short, single-stranded oligonucleotides (DNA or RNA, usually 20 to 110 nucleotides in length) capable of binding to a specific molecule with an affinity that can be of the same order of magnitude as that of antibodies. An aptamer specific to a target is identified in vitro by an iterative selection process called SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) performed on an initial mixture of a very high number of different oligonucleotides [ 161 , 162 , 163 ]. Most of the already identified specific oligonucleotide sequences are directed against large molecules such as peptides, proteins, nucleic acids and even bacteria, but also for a significant number of small molecules such as drugs, organic pollutants, and even inorganic ions [ 163 , 164 , 165 ].…”

“…Moreover, modifications can be introduced during their chemical synthesis to improve their stability or to facilitate their immobilization [ 166 ]. If their use in the field of biosensors has been widely described as still recently for mycotoxins [ 161 , 167 ] and marine (bio)toxins [ 8 , 9 ], the development of OSs for their use as selective extraction sorbents is quite recent but seems to be a very promising approach [ 168 ]. As illustrated by the works summarized in Table 4 , the development of OSs for toxins mainly concerns two classes of mycotoxins, OTA and aflatoxins.…”