Recent Advances in Biosensor Development for Foodborne Virus Detection

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

The research and commercialisation of POC devices for foodborne bacterial detection are far more advanced compared to those for foodborne virus detection. The opportunity to apply bacterial detection techniques to virus is low because bacteria are easier to be cultured and amplified, but virus culture and amplification are difficult and cannot be enriched in most cases [35] . Moreover viruses cannot replicate in host free environments and is almost always found in low numbers in the complex food matrices. The size of viruses ranges from 20 to 400 nm, while the size of bacteria ranges from 1 micron to 5 microns. Due to the extremely smaller size of viruses, the sensing platforms developed for bacteria need to be extensively modified for the detection of virus particles. In addition, the composition of cell surface (peptidoglycan) proteins of bacteria is not comparable with the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase compositions of viruses, and the biorecognition elements has to be tailor made to create the binding with the proteins. Along with smaller sizes, absence of cell wall and ribosomes in the viruses in comparison to the bacteria also allows for changes in the localized microenvironment towards the development of biosensing platforms. Considering the factors of bacterial detection techniques that cannot be used for viral detection, and that viruses often present with lower copy numbers than bacteria in food samples, this situation demands superior sensitivity of the virus detection devices to be at least attomolar or picomolar level.