Aptasensors in Health, Environment and Food Safety Monitoring

TLDR

Biosensors have evolved to use biomacromolecules such as enzymes, antibodies, receptors, nucleic acids, organelles, tissues, and intact cells, and the recent emergence of aptamers—highly sensitive, specific, reusable, stable, and non‑immunogenic ligands—offers a promising alternative for biosensor design. This review aims to survey the applications of aptasensors in health diagnostics, the food industry, and environmental monitoring. The authors compile and analyze existing studies on aptasensor use across these domains.

Abstract

Biosensors have been developed using various types of sensing elements like biomacromolecules (viz. enzymes, antibodies, receptors, nucleic acids, etc.) organelles, tissues, intact cells of both microorganisms and higher organisms. A recent trend is the emergence of aptamers as sensing elements that has the potential to replace all the above ligands. This is possible due to the unique features of aptamers (sensitivity, specificity, reusability, stability, non-immunogenic- ity), which can be easily exploited in biosensor technology. Aptasensors are thus basically biosensors based on aptamers as ligand molecules. Here we review the various applications of aptasensors in health (specifically in diagnostics), food industry and environmental monitoring.