Recent advances of aptamer based sensors for aflatoxins

Abstract

Aflatoxin and its metabolites have posed a significant threat to human health as carcinogens. Sensitive detection of aflatoxins is demanded in food safety, environmental monitoring, and risk assessment. Over the past a few decades, aptamers have attracted wide interests, which can be in-vitro selected and bind with targets. Aptamer-based sensors, particularly for aflatoxins detection, have become powerful tools due to their high-affinity specific binding. In this review, we summarize recent developments of typical aptasensors for the quantification of aflatoxins, especially for aflatoxin B1, including colorimetric, electrochemical, chemiluminescence, fluorescence, surface plasmon resonance (SPR), and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensors, with particular emphasis on aptamer binding mechanism, and various sensor designs as well as analytical performance, etc. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of these aptasensors and their development prospects are discussed.