DNA, protein and aptamer-based methods for seafood allergens detection: Principles, comparisons and updated applications

Abstract

The increasing number of people with seafood allergy has caused a series of problems for practitioners and consumers in the seafood industry year by year. Thereby, development of efficient, convenient and low-cost allergen detection methods is urgently needed. This review introduces three important existing seafood allergen detection methods associated with DNA-based, protein-based and aptamer-based. Their principles and biological characteristics are firstly presented. The core of these three methods are DNA amplification techniques, specific binding of antigens and antibodies, and specific binding of aptamers and ligands, respectively. Among them, DNA-based detection method is an indirect analysis, which takes the gene of allergen as the detection object and is characterized by good stability and high sensitivity. Protein-based and aptamer-based, methods employ indirect analysis for allergen detection. The difference is that the latter uses an easily synthesized and highly efficient aptamer as the detection probe, showing great promising potentials. The advantages and disadvantages of the three mentioned detection methods are also discussed. In the future, as more efficient and reliable detection methods for seafood allergens come into practice, the possibility of seafood allergy patients eating seafood products by mistake will be greatly reduced, which will ensure the food safety and the health of allergy patients.

Keywords:

• allergy
• aptamer-based methods
• DNA-based methods
• protein-based methods
• Seafood

Author contributions

Jilin Li wrote and revised the original manuscript, prepared the tables and all the figures. Huifen Wang revised the manuscript. Jun-Hu Cheng conceived the idea, supervised the work and revised and the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31972205) for its support. This research was also supported by Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2021A1515010644), the International S&T Cooperation Projects of Guangdong Province (2020A0505100007), the Fishery Development Project of Guangdong (2019B9), the Contemporary International Collaborative Research Centre of Guangdong Province on Food Innovative Processing and Intelligent Control (2019A050519001) and the Common Technical Innovation Team of Guangdong Province on Preservation and Logistics of Agricultural Products (2020KJ145).