Integration and synergy in protein-nanomaterial hybrids for biosensing: Strategies and in-field detection applications

Biosensors contribute a lot to the reliable and sensitive detection in various fields, especially emerging trends of in-field and real-time detection for point-of-care diagnosis, food safety and environmental monitoring. The signal amplification that improves the analytical performance and the compact integration of various biosensing components with/in miniaturized and portable devices are essential but still challenging. Integrating the merits of bio-active proteins (enzyme, antibody, etc.) and nanomaterials (nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanosheets, nanoflowers etc.) with abundant physicochemical properties, numerous protein-nanomaterial hybrids (PN hybrids) have been designed and applied for biosensing in recent years. PN hybrids can serve as not only sensitive probes for analyte recognition and signal generation/amplification thereby enhancing analytical performance, but also miniaturized and full-functional sensing components that are easily combined with other devices, greatly simplifying the construction and assay procedures. In this review, the state-of-art strategies of PN hybrids for biosensing are summarized from the view of the role of nanomaterial components, i.e. immobilization matrix, catalyst, and label. Recent advances for the emerging in-field detection applications of PN hybrids with the incorporation of portable hand-held readers and miniaturized devices are then surveyed. The features of PN hybrids for the construction of these miniaturized biosensors are focused. The integration and synergy between proteins and nanomaterials for biosensing is emphasized and discussed.