Recent Advances in Biosensor Development for Foodborne Virus Detection

Neethirajan, Suresh; Ahmed, Syed Rahin; Chand, Rohit; Buozis, John; Nagy, Éva

Microfluidic technology has been successfully applied to waterborne and foodborne virus detection. Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip modules have been used to detect murine norovirus with drop-based technology [42] . Human and rodent noroviruses may exchange RNA between the virus genomes in an infected host, an important driver of genetic diversity, which is critically important in norovirus infection diagnosis and future infectious strain prediction. The successful application of drop-based microfluidics on two murine noroviruses co-infected mice offers a platform for amplification, detection, and recovery of individual recombinants in co-infection. Lab-on-a-chip microfluidics was used to detect murine norovirus contaminated oysters with micro-bead beating [43] . Food sample preparation has been challenging in foodborne virus detection. The study demonstrates that microfluidics can be applied to foodborne norovirus detection using a shape switchable sample preparation chamber. Noroviruses in the sample were absorbed on microbeads by bead beating lysis and electrostatic physisorption. The extracted RNA was amplified and detected in a detection chamber. This microfluidic technology is ready to be applied to detecting noroviruses in large volumes of environmental and food samples.