Aptamers for mycotoxin recognition in food: Recent advances and future considerations

The contamination of mycotoxin in food has posed a serious threat to human health and safety. Accurate detection of mycotoxins provides a strong guarantee for food safety. Aptamers with excellent recognition capacity to mycotoxins have gained growing attention because of their high binding affinity, high specificity and low cost. They are commonly generated by an in vitro selection procedure called SELEX. However, the existing performance of mycotoxin aptamers are not good enough in complex food matrix, and the success rate of SELEX still need to be improved. The employment of efficient SELEX strategies for the generation of better mycotoxin aptamers is significantly important. This article has reviewed different SELEX approaches conducted for mycotoxin aptamer generation. Furthermore, the properties of various mycotoxin aptamers have been discussed. Finally, challenges and future considerations for mycotoxin aptamer selection are summarized, and their strengths and limitations in food safety application are highlighted.