Aptameric Sensing in Food Safety

Foodborne illnesses are a global menace on public health. However, because they are expensive, time-consuming, and nonspecific, standard methods used before now for detecting foodborne pathogens and biotoxins are often unsuitable for real-time detection and surveillance, particularly in low-resource communities that may serve as the source of the food basket in a geographical location. Improvements in systems for the robust detection and screening of foodborne pathogens are therefore needed to effectively regulate the transmission of foodborne pathogens by promoting early treatment and/or isolation of infected products. Interestingly, research work in bioaffinity interactions have led to advances in SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) technology for the generation of short, single-stranded DNA/RNA molecular probes (known as aptamers) that bind selectively to specific pathogenic targets and membrane receptors. Immobilized aptamers also yields aptasensors that are effective for detection in real time. This chapter focuses on the merits and applicability of various established apta-assays over conventional techniques for the detection and screening of foodborne pathogens and biotoxins.