DNA functionalized metal and metal oxide nanoparticles: principles and recent advances in food safety detection

Abstract

The frequent occurrence of food safety incidents has given rise to unprecedented concern about food contamination issues for both consumers and the industry. Various contaminations in food pose serious threats to food safety and human health. Many detection methods were studied to address the challenge. Recently, biosensors relying on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)-functionalized nanoparticles have been developed as an efficient and effective detection method. In the current review, the strategies for DNA assembly metal and metal oxide nanoparticles are elaborated, recent applications of the sensors based on DNA-functionalized nanoparticles in food contaminant detection are discussed. Pathogenic bacteria, heavy metal ions, mycotoxins, antibiotics, and pesticides are covered as food contaminants. Additionally, limitations and future trends of functionalized nanoparticles-based technology are also presented. The current review indicates that DNA-functionalized metal and metal oxide nanoparticles are a novel nanomaterial with unique biological and physical properties for developing electrochemical, fluorescent, colourimetric and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensors, etc. Compared with conventional detection techniques, DNA-functionalized metal and metal oxide nanoparticles have considerable advantages with high accuracy, high specificity, micro-intelligence, and low cost. Nevertheless, the stability of these sensors and the limitations of real-time detection are still under discussion. Therefore, more tolerant, portable, and rapid DNA sensors should be developed to better the real-time monitoring of harmful contaminants.

Keywords:

• DNA
• nanoparticles
• food contamination
• sensors
• electrochemical
• fluorescence
• colourimetric
• SERS

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1603400) for its support. This research was also supported by the Contemporary International Collaborative Research Centre of Guangdong Province on Food Innovative Processing and Intelligent Control (2019A050519001), the Common Technical Innovation Team of Guangdong Province on Preservation and Logistics of Agricultural Products (2019KJ145, 2019KJ101), the Innovation Centre of Guangdong Province for Modern Agricultural Science and Technology on Intelligent Sensing and Precision Control of Agricultural Product Qualities and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2018MS056, 2017MS075).