Emerging Argonaute-based food safety detection: from amplification to amplification-free manner

Food safety has attracted extensive global attention, making the development of efficient and rapid detection methods essential for food safety risk control. Argonaute-based biosensing has emerged as a promising tool for food safety analysis owing to its unique advantages, including high recognition specificity, low constraints on target sequences, stable and cost-effective guides, and ease of multiplex detection. This review summarized recent progress in Argonaute-based biosensing from amplification to amplification-free manner within the field of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, toxins, etc. It begins with an overview of current nucleic acid detection methods and programmable nucleases. Then, the structure and working principle of Argonaute were briefly introduced. Subsequently, the application of Argonaute-based food safety detection was systematically reviewed according to amplification and amplification-free manners. followed by current challenges and future perspectives. Argonaute provides reliable technical support for food safety monitoring and contributes to the high-quality development of the food industry.