Mousivand, M. (2024). New technologies for detecting mycotoxins in plant yields and products. Plant Pathology Science, 13(1), 89-103.
Mycotoxins are fungal secondary metabolites known as global concerns on humans and livestock health regarding to their toxicity and carcinogenicity. Increasing demand for fast, simple and low-cost detection of these compounds, especially on-site, have been lead to develop various biosensors. Although antibodies have been the most widely used diagnostic probes in biosensors for several decades but monoclonal antibody production is difficult for mycotoxins as small and non-immunogenic molecules. Therefore, aptameric probes have been emerged as a new technology for mycotoxin monitoring. Aptamers are single-stranded oligonucleotides that detect target molecule by folding into a three-dimensional conformation, with a binding affinity equal to that of monoclonal antibodies. Aptamers have been considered as the most important competitors of antibodies for biosensor development regarding to their significant advantages in terms of no limiting in target type, smaller size, higher stability, synthetic nature and low cost. Exploiting aptameric probes in biosensor designing have been led to aptasensors development for specific and sensitive tracking of target molecules, and mycotoxins. The aptameric probes, experimental screening methodology, various aptasensors and their applications in detecting mycotoxins has been described, and discussed in this article.
