Nanobiosensors for aflatoxin B1 detection, current research trends and future outlooks

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is the food contaminant metabolite excreted by Aspergillus fungus. Many detection strategies have been developed due to AFB1 widespread distribution and intrinsic carcinogenic and mutagenic effects on living organism. Nanobiosensors are bioanalytical devices that employ the materials in nanoscale dimensions to improve their diagnosis performance. They present multiple advantages such as providing higher surface area/volume ratio, immobilization of biomolecules, signal generation, signal amplification and also signal transduction. The present review offers a description of multi classification of AFB1 nanobiosensors based on bioreceptors, signal transduction and applied nanoparticles (NPs). The comprehensive and updated of recent advances for detection of AFB1 toxin through nanobiosensors are described with emphasis of applied strategies and components in their working principles. Conventional and novel developed NPs are also defined and discussed to determine their practical roles in improving efficacy of AFB1 detection. In addition, the trends and future perspectives are included as the outlook.