Paper based microfluidic aptasensor for food safety

Abstract

Food analysis is requiring rapid, accurate, sensitive and cost-effective methods to monitor and guarantee the safety and quality to fulfill the strict food legislation and consumer demands. In our study, a nano-materials enhanced multipurpose paper based microfluidic aptasensor was demonstrated as a sensing tool for accurate detection of food allergens and food toxins. Graphene oxide (GO) and specific aptamer-functionalized quantum dots (QDs) were employed as probes, the fluorescence quenching and recovering of the QDs caused by the interaction among GO, aptamer-functionalized QDs and the target protein were investigated to quantitatively analyze the target concentration. The homogenous assay was performed on the paper based microfluidic chip, which significantly decreased the sample and reagent consumptions and reduced the assay time. Egg white lysozyme, ß-conglutin lupine and food toxins, okadaic acid and brevetoxin standard solutions and spiked food samples were successfully assayed by the presented aptasensor. Dual-target assay was completed within 5 min, and superior sensitivities were achieved when testing the samples with commercial ELISA kits side by side.

Recent Microdevice-Based Aptamer Sensors

“…Otherwise, some external molecule may be used as an optical label. Fluorescent materials [ 13 , 17 , 19 , 21 , 28 , 37 , 38 , 42 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 50 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 60 , 61 , 68 , 69 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 ], and dyes (colorimetry) [ 25 , 64 , 74 , 77 , 78 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 97 , 98 ] are commonly used as labels in microdevices based on aptasensors.…”

“…In recent years, microfluidic chips have aroused increasing interest for various application because of their desirable features, such as the smaller sample amount needed and lowered reagent consumption. The substrate materials of microfluidic chips such as polymers (e.g., PDMS, PMMA, PS) [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ], ceramics (e.g., glass) [ 6 , 13 , 14 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 21 , 25 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ], and semiconduct...…”

“…Okadaic acid is known as diarrhetic shellfish toxin (DST) and is found in contaminated shellfish. Various microfluidic techniques for okadaic acid detection have been developed, including interdigitated microelectrodes with AuNPs [ 73 ], a paper-based aptasensor [ 61 ], and an enzyme-linked aptamer assay (ELAA) [ 22 ]. In the ELAA competitive assay, the lowest limit of detection reached 0.01 ng·mL −1 and the widest detection range was from 0.025 to 10 ng·mL −1 in spiked clam samples.…”

Recent advances in thread-based microfluidics for diagnostic applications

“…To achieve a tunable hydrophobicity in a thread-based microfluidic device, Choi et al (2018) used twelve-fold diluted polysiloxanes to partially change the hydrophilicity of the cotton thread to obtain desirable fluidic delay and optimum interaction between the antibody-functionalized gold nanoparticle probes and target antigen (Fig. Recently, the use of the thread-based microfluidics has been applied to immunoassays Mao et al, 2015a;Song et al, 2017), determination of nucleic acids , proteins Mao et al, 2015b;Nilghaz et al, 2014a;Ulum et al, 2016), glucose Lee et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2014a), virus (Weng and Neethirajan, 2018b), small ions (Jarujamrus et al, 2018;Yan et al, 2015), bacteria isolation and quantification , chemotaxis studies for cell culture systems Ramesan et al, 2016), blood typing (Nilghaz et al, 2014b), chemical synthesis (Banerjee et al, 2013) and metabolite analysis (Cabot et al, 2018). With the modification, more resultant complexes were generated and captured at the test zone thus enhanced the sensitivity (around 10-fold signal enhancement) significantly.…”

“…Our group (Weng and Neethirajan, 2018b) utilized a cotton thread device in the application of avian coronavirus detection. Our group (Weng and Neethirajan, 2018b) utilized a cotton thread device in the application of avian coronavirus detection.…”