Review-Chemical and Biological Sensors for Viral Detection

Abstract

Infectious diseases commonly occur in contaminated water, food, and bodily fluids and spread rapidly, resulting in death of humans and animals worldwide. Among infectious agents, viruses pose a serious threat to public health and global economy because they are often difficult to detect and their infections are hard to treat. Since it is crucial to develop rapid, accurate, cost-effective, and in-situ methods for early detection viruses, a variety of sensors have been reported so far. This review provides an overview of the recent developments in electrochemical sensors and biosensors for detecting viruses and use of these sensors on environmental, clinical and food monitoring. Electrochemical biosensors for determining viruses are divided into four main groups including nucleic acid-based, antibody-based, aptamer-based and antigen-based electrochemical biosensors. Finally, the drawbacks and advantages of each type of sensors are identified and discussed.

Keywords: Electroanalytical Electrochemistry; Sensors; electrochemical biosensors; virus detection.

Figure 1.

(A) Equivalent circuit models on interdigitated electrode (IDE) sensors. (i) Bare IDEs with multiple fingers. (ii) Equivalent circuit model for bare IDE sensors. (iii) Equivalent circuit model after probe immobilization. (iv) Equivalent circuit model after MCU incubation and before target hybridization. (v) Equivalent circuit model after target hybridization for complementary targets. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2016, Elsevier B.V. (B) Different steps for the fabrication of electrochemical DNA biosensor. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2018 Elsevier Inc. (C) DNA hybridization sensor based on AuNP-modified SPCE employing label-free impedance for the detection of CTV-related nucleic acid. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2018, Elsevier B.V.

Figure 2.

(A) Fabrication of the graphene immunosensor. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2018, Elsevier B.V. (B) Reaction scheme for Au microwire electrodes. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2018, American Chemical Society. (C) The three-electrode immunosensor chip with three detection zones. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2015, Elsevier B.V.

Figure 3.

(A) Electrochemical nano-aptasensor for HCV core antigen detection. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2017, Elsevier Inc. (B) The scheme of recognitions between the aptamers and viruses on the gold electrode surfaces with low and high surface probe densities. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2018, Elsevier B.V.

Figure 4.

(A) (i) Capacitive immunosensor design and (ii) working principles. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2019, Elsevier B.V. (B) The fabrication steps of the impedimetric immunosensor for dengue virus. Adapted with permission from Ref. , Copyright 2018, Elsevier Ltd.