Recently, Dr. Muhammad Shemyal Nisar, one of SBC engineering lecturers, published an article titled Au@SiO2 SERS nanotags based lateral flow immunoassay for simultaneous detection of aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A in the Top journal Talanta (6.556, JCR-Q1).
Agricultural products are frequently contaminated by mycotoxins. Multiplex, ultrasensitive, and rapid determination of mycotoxins is still a challenging problem, which is of great significance to food safety and public health. Herein, a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) based lateral flow immunoassay (LFA) for the simultaneous on-site determination of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and ochratoxin A (OTA) on the same test line (T line) was developed, in this study.
In practice, two kinds of Raman reporters 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA), and 5,5'-dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) (DTNB) encoded silica-encapsulated gold nanotags (Au4−MBA@SiO2 and AuDNTB@SiO2) were used as detection markers to identify the two different mycotoxins. Through systematic optimization of the experimental conditions, this biosensor has high sensitivity and multiplexing with the limits of detection (LODs)at 0.24 pg mL−1 for AFB1 and 0.37 pg mL−1 for OTA. These are far below the regulatory limits set by the European Commission.
These results demonstrate that, due to the optical and chemical merits of silica shell, the developed immunoassay has good stability, selectivity, and reliability, which can be used for routine monitoring of mycotoxin contamination. The SERS LFA is a simple, fast, and ultra-sensitive detection platform for the rapid detection of multiple mycotoxins, which has enormous potential as an on-site diagnostics tool in resource-limited areas.
Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2023.124401
