Designed Strategies for Fluorescence-Based Biosensors for the Detection of Mycotoxins

Abstract

Small molecule toxins such as mycotoxins with low molecular weight are the most widely studied biological toxins. These biological toxins are responsible for food poisoning and have the potential to be used as biological warfare agents at the toxic dose. Due to the poisonous nature of mycotoxins, effective analysis techniques for quantifying their toxicity are indispensable. In this context, biosensors have been emerged as a powerful tool to monitors toxins at extremely low level. Recently, biosensors based on fluorescence detection have attained special interest with the incorporation of nanomaterials. This review paper will focus on the development of fluorescence-based biosensors for mycotoxin detection, with particular emphasis on their design as well as properties such as sensitivity and specificity. A number of these fluorescent biosensors have shown promising results in food samples for the detection of mycotoxins, suggesting their future potential for food applications.

A Liquid Chromatographic Method for Rapid and Sensitive Analysis of Aflatoxins in Laboratory Fungal Cultures

“…This ability to fluoresce has paved the way for most analytical methods for the detection and quantification of these toxins [12]. Because of the absence of a double bond in the furan ring, AFB2 and AFG2 have a higher fluorescence quantum yield of fluorophore than the unsaturated compounds AFB1 and AFG1 [13].…”

“…This ability to fluoresce has paved the way for most analytical methods for the detection and quantification of these toxins [12]. Because of the absence of a double bond in the furan ring, AFB2 and AFG2 have a higher fluorescence quantum yield of fluorophore than the unsaturated compounds AFB1 and AFG1 [13]. Aspergilli residing in field soil of A. flavus specifically, is considered as the main source of AF contamination of agricultural products; however, not all strains of A. flavus produce AFs [14].…”

A Highly Sensitive “on-off” Time-Resolved Phosphorescence Sensor Based on Aptamer Functionalized Magnetite Nanoparticles for Cadmium Detection in Food Samples

“…Optical detection sensors based on aptamer have been widely applied in various areas due to their highly selective and economic efficiency, and these areas include environmental measurement [4], clinical diagnosis [5], and food safety [6]. Recently, various strategies based on aptamer for metal ions detection have been developed, including Hg 2+ detection using DNA-modified gold sensor, Ag + detection using graphene nanoprobe, and Pb 2+ detection using graphene quantum dots [7][8][9].…”

An Aggregation-Induced Emission-Based Indirect Competitive Immunoassay for Fluorescence “Turn-On” Detection of Drug Residues in Foodstuffs

“…Although conventional ELISAs are simple to use, effective, and commercially available, they suffer from moderate sensitivity, and are therefore unsuitable for analyzing low concentration analytes (Zhang et al, 2015b; Wang et al, 2016; Chen et al, 2019). A variety of fluorogenic ELISAs use fluorescent molecules or nanoparticles and have attracted increasing attention due to their higher sensitivity compared with traditional ELISAs (Li et al, 2015a; Fu et al, 2017; Sharma et al, 2018). Current fluorescent immunoassays have focused on the extensive synthesis of antibody and fluorescent molecules/nanomaterials conjugates and/or design of fluorescent signal mechanisms instead of enzymatic antibody labeling, as in traditional ELISA (Liu et al, 2013; Hlavácek et al, 2016; Sun et al, 2016).…”