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.

Keywords: aptamer; biosensor; detection; food safety; mycotoxin.

Figure 1

Chemical structures of the important mycotoxins.

Figure 2

Principle illustration of fluorescent, colorimetric and electrochemical aptasensors for the detection of small molecule mycotoxins.

Figure 3

Schematic representation of the fluorescent aptasensor for OTA determination based on the conformational change of aptamer.

Figure 4

Principle illustration of colorimetric aptasensor for detection of OTA via AuNPs encapsulated DNA hydrogel. Reprinted from Liu et al. (2015) with permission.

Figure 5

Principle diagram of electrochemical aptasensor for OTA analysis based on RCA signal amplification. Reprinted from Huang et al. (2013) with permission.

Figure 6

Sensing strategy of electrochemical aptasensor for detection of OTA based on exonuclease-assistant signal amplification.

Figure 7

Schematic illustration of chemiluminescent aptasensor for AFB1 determination by using HCR signal amplification. Reprinted from Yao et al. (2019) with permission.

Figure 8

Sensing illustration of electrochemical aptasensor for detection of AFB1 based on the conformational change of aptamer.

Figure 9

Schematic illustration of fluorescent aptasensor for detection of AFM1 by using graphene oxide signal amplification. Reprinted from Guo et al. (2019) with permission.

Figure 10

(A) Diagram of the construction of 3 ds DNA-PtNi@Co-MOF networks. (B) Schematic illustration of the proposed aptasensor for the detection of ZEN. Reprinted from He and Yan (2020) with permission.

Figure 11

(A) Principle diagram of SPR aptasensor platform. (B) Principle diagram of sensor chip and optical setup in SPR. Reprinted from Wei et al. (2019) with permission.