Emerging strategies in fluorescent aptasensor toward food hazard aflatoxins detection

Background: Aflatoxins contamination, one of the most severe food safety issue, has received global concern for everyone's health. Fluorescent aptasensor, as a rising sensing strategy, have opened up innovative platform for monitoring and trace levels of aflatoxins thanks to their ease of operation, rapid response, accurate determi-nation, and high sensitivity and selectivity, as well as the promising potential in point-of-care (POC) testing. Nevertheless, the comprehensive review on fluorescent aptasensors for aflatoxins (mainly AFB1 and AFM1) spanning 2018-2022 has not yet been reported.Scope and approach: In this article, we first introduce and discuss various fluorescent response mechanisms (such as fo spacing diaeresis rster resonance energy transfer (FRET), inner filter effect (IFE), aggregation-induced emission (AIE), as well as fluorescence anisotropy (FA) and fluorescence polarization (FP) systems). In addition, latest applications of fluorescent aptasensors for aflatoxins are critically reviewed in detail. Finally, advanced nanomaterials for improved analytical performance is highlighted, together with the challenges and future trends. .Key findings and conclusions: Fluorescent aptasensors have been well-established for aflatoxins determination to ensure food safety. All these achievements make fluorescent aptasensing a promising candidate in POC testing. However, most researchers only pay much attention to the construction and application of simple aptasensor. The in-depth direction should focus on the mechanism research like conformation change, binding sites, inter -action kinetics, affinity determination, fluorescent sensing protocols. Additionally, numerous methods are still applied in the laboratory, and there are few devices that suitable for POC testing. Future direction should aim at developing integrating miniaturized devices and even their commercialized applications.

Automated summary

This article provides a comprehensive review of the applications and development trends of fluorescent aptasensors for aflatoxin detection from 2018 to 2022. Fluorescent aptasensors, as a promising sensing strategy, have great potential in ensuring food safety. However, current research mainly focuses on the construction and application of simple aptasensors, and more in-depth studies on mechanism, as well as the development of miniaturized devices for point-of-care testing, should be emphasized.