Recent developments in application of nucleic acid aptamer in food safety

Food, a basic necessity of life, is often contaminated with harmful agents like pathogenic microorganisms, biotoxins, allergens, antibiotic residues, pesticides, heavy metals etc. Application of efficient, sensitive, reliable and cost-effective analytical technologies to detect the level of contaminants is one of the first steps in ensuring food safety. Oligonucleotide aptamers comprising of short sequences of DNA or RNA are emerging as an alternative to antibodies in development of novel biosensors or bioassays for analysis of various food contaminants. In the pursuit of developing a perfect analytical method, several design strategies involving nanomaterials, biological reagents, microfluidics etc. have resulted in several disruptive innovations. Currently, aptamers are utilised in affinity columns and various sorbent surfaces for selective extraction of analyte from food matrix. Taking advantages of target responsive characteristic and cross-linking ability of aptamers, hydrogel based sensing materials have been developed. In this review, we present an overview on the recent developments in application of aptamers in evaluating food safety and the influence of food matrices on the performance of aptamer based analytical methods.