Recent Advances in Biosensor Development for Foodborne Virus Detection

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

Compared with antigen-antibody reaction, aptamers bear tremendous advantages. For example, they can be synthesised easily; their bindings are faster, higher specificity and affinity, and more stable; and they can be used for wider range of targets like small molecules, drugs, and metal ions [126] . Different chemical tags can be added to aptamers to increase flexibility without affecting affinity. Their lower molecular weight enhances the stability to sustain repetitious denaturation and renaturation. Aptasensor, due to its advantages, is increasingly explored, particularly in intact virus detection using SPR and other platforms [127] . Aptasensors are biosensors utilising aptamers as bioreceptors to combine different conductors for selective molecular application and recognition [128] . The combination of multi-purpose aptamers and multi-function conductors, such as electrochemical, optical and mass conductors, facilitates the use of aptasensors in both pathogen and chemical detection (Figure 8 ). Aptamer techniques have been widely applied to foodborne virus detection. Figure 8 . Application of aptamers in biosensing technologies for the food analysis [128] .