Biosensing approaches to detect potential milk contaminants: a comprehensive review

ABSTRACT

Accidentally present contaminants or intentionally added adulterants in milk lead potentially to delivering not only unhealthy but seriously hazardous products. Thorough, fast and sensitive analytical tools are essential for monitoring of milk quality, and for screening of any objectionable contaminants. Biosensors represent an innovative, time-efficient and on-site solution to assess milk quality in addition to their specificity towards target analytes alongside high accuracy within such complex matrices. Most biosensors use antibodies, aptamers or enzymes as the bio-receptor and rely on optical, electrochemical or thermometric transduction to generate a signal. The simplest biosensors appear to be those based on a colorimetric assay, being simple and having a signal that can be detected visually. Electrochemical sensors are more specific and sensitive, though with more complicated designs, whereas thermometric sensors have not been thoroughly explored concerning biosensing contaminants in milk. This review discusses recent advances in the field of biosensors and analyzes the various methods of bio-recognition and transduction with regard to their advantages, limitations, and application to milk products. Additionally, challenges facing further development of these strategies to fulfil the increasing demand for fast and on-line milk quality control are also presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Biosensor
• milk contaminant
• antibiotics
• hormones
• pesticides
• mycotoxins
• melamine and urea

Acknowledgments

Dr Mohamed Farag thanks the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, Germany for financial support.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest and they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.