Development of a competitive ELISA based on estrogen receptor and weak competitive molecule for the screening of potential estrogens in foods

Enzyme labeled competitive molecules are generally homologous with competitors in competitive broad-spectrum enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). It is speculated that the detectability will be improved when the competitiveness of competitive molecule is weak. Herein, common small molecule food hazard-estrogen disrupting chemicals (EDCs) were used as target model for verification. The dual-estrogen receptor (ER) and three estrogen-enzyme conjugates with various responses were used as recognizers and competitive molecules in ELISA. ELISA based on bisphenol (BPA)-horseradish peroxidase (HRP) has the highest detectability and can screen all six EDCs, in which BPA-HRP showed the weakest ER excitatory activity (Ka = 1.39 x 10(-2) nmol center dot L-1) among three conjugates. The proposal showed good practicability with spiked recovery of 80.0-110 % for estrogens (17 beta-estradiol, 17 alpha-estradiol, BPA) in foodstuffs, and revealed biomarkers with weak competitiveness may be applied to other competitive procedures to improve detectability, and it provides sen-sitive pre-screening strategy for follow-up screening tool.

Automated summary

In competitive broad-spectrum enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), weak competitiveness of the competitive molecule leads to improved detectability. Using dual-estrogen receptor (ER) and three estrogen-enzyme conjugates, ELISA based on bisphenol (BPA)-horseradish peroxidase (HRP) shows the highest detectability and can screen all six estrogen disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Biomarkers with weak competitiveness can be applied to other competitive procedures to enhance detectability.