Minireview: Trends in Optical-Based Biosensors for Point-Of-Care Bacterial Pathogen Detection for Food Safety and Clinical Diagnostics

ABSTRACT

This review considers the evolution of optical-based biosensors for bacterial pathogen detection as the causative agents for different diseases. Conventional identification and detection techniques are tedious, expensive and time-consuming, typically requiring sample pretreatment and hours to days to provide the results. For the successful monitoring of bacterial pathogen infection, fast, accurate, cost-effective and reliable techniques to simultaneously detect multiple bacterial pathogens and microbial metabolites are of the utmost importance in fields such as the food industry and healthcare. In addition, miniaturized, small amount of sample, easy to use with minimal accessories, and portable device should take advantage for rapid and point-of-care (POC) diagnosis. Optical transduction plays a substantial character in the development of such miniaturized and integrated biosensors as the alternatives to conventional analytical methods. In this review, we consider trends in point-of-care bacterial pathogen detection, different biorecognition elements, immobilization techniques, and optical based transduction methods applied for bacterial pathogen detection along with the respective advantages and drawbacks of each technique. Moreover, some examples of recently reported techniques for point-of-care analysis are also discussed. The analytical performance and characteristics of an ideal biosensor are discussed based on literature biosensor descriptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Bacterial pathogens detection
• colorimetry
• enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay
• food safety and clinics
• luminescence
• optical-based biosensors
• point-of-care analysis
• surface plasmon resonance
• systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals.

Informed consent

There is no informed consent associated with this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Foundation of China (No.2016YFD0401204), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20160459), and Primary Research & Development Plan of Jiangsu Province (No. BE2016691), Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Quality Control, and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.