New methodologies in screening of antibiotic residues in animal-derived foods: Biosensors

Antibiotics are leading medicine asset for fighting against microbial infection, but also one of the important causes of death worldwide. Many antibiotics used as therapeutics and growth promotion agents in animals can lead to antibiotic residues in animal-derived food which harm the health of people. Hence, it is vital to screen antibiotic residues in animal derived foods. Typical methods for screening antibiotic residues are based on microbiological growth inhibition and immunological analyses. However these two methods have some disadvantages, such as poor sensitive, lack of specificity and etc. Therefore, it is necessary to develop simple, more efficient and high sensitive screening methods of antibiotic residues. These assays have been introduced for the screening of numerous food samples. Biosensors are emerging methods, applied in screening antibiotic residues in animal-derived foods. Two types of biosensors, whole-cell based biosensors and surface plasmon resonance-based sensors have been extensively used. Their advantages include portability, small sample requirement, high sensitivity and good specificity over the traditional screening methods.