Emerging strategies in fluorescent aptasensor toward food hazard aflatoxins detection

Aflatoxins contamination, one of the most severe food safety issue, has received global concern for everyone's health. Fluorescent aptasensor, as a rising sensing strategy, have opened up innovative platform for monitoring and trace levels of aflatoxins thanks to their ease of operation, rapid response, accurate determination, and high sensitivity and selectivity, as well as the promising potential in point-of-care (POC) testing. Nevertheless, the comprehensive review on fluorescent aptasensors for aflatoxins (mainly AFB1 and AFM1) spanning 2018–2022 has not yet been reported. In this article, we first introduce and discuss various fluorescent response mechanisms (such as förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), inner filter effect (IFE), aggregation-induced emission (AIE), as well as fluorescence anisotropy (FA) and fluorescence polarization (FP) systems). In addition, latest applications of fluorescent aptasensors for aflatoxins are critically reviewed in detail. Finally, advanced nanomaterials for improved analytical performance is highlighted, together with the challenges and future trends. Fluorescent aptasensors have been well-established for aflatoxins determination to ensure food safety. All these achievements make fluorescent aptasensing a promising candidate in POC testing. However, most researchers only pay much attention to the construction and application of simple aptasensor. The in-depth direction should focus on the mechanism research like conformation change, binding sites, interaction kinetics, affinity determination, fluorescent sensing protocols. Additionally, numerous methods are still applied in the laboratory, and there are few devices that suitable for POC testing. Future direction should aim at developing integrating miniaturized devices and even their commercialized applications.