Exonuclease-based aptasensors: Promising for food safety and diagnostic aims

As of today's requirement, developing cost-effective smart sensing tools with ultrahigh sensitivity for food safety insurance is of special importance. For this purpose, aptamer-based biosensors (aptasensors) powered by the superiorities of the recycling signal amplification strategies have been expanded especially. Target recycling supported by enzymes is an appealing approach for implementing signal amplification. As the supreme biocatalyst enzymes, exonucleases can inaugurate signal improvement by involving a single target in a process would result in appreciable repeating cycles of the cleavage of the phosphodiester bonds between the building blocks of the nucleic acid strands, and also, their terminals. Although there are diverse substances for catalyzing amplification strategies, including nanoparticles, carbon-based nanocomposites, and quantum dots (QDs), exonucleases are of superiority over them by simplifying the amplification process with no need for the complicated pre-treatment processes. The outstanding selectivity and great sensitivity of the aptasensors tuned by amplification potency of exonucleases nominate them as the promising sensing tools for label-free, ease-of-use, cost-effective, and real-time diagnosis of diverse targets. Here, we summarize the achievements and perspectives in the scientific branch of aptasensor design for the qualitative monitoring of diverse targets by cooperation of exonucleases with the conspicuous potential for the signal amplification. Finally, some results are expressed to provide a comprehensive viewpoint for developing novel nuclease-based aptasensors in the future.

A fluorescent aptasensor for quantification of cocaine mediated by signal amplification characteristics of UiO-66/AuNPs nanocomposite

Due to the detrimental effects of cocaine on the human body such as organ damage, paranoia, immunodeficiency, cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, and stress, it is highly required to develop sensing approaches for its rapid and facile determination. Based on the signal enhancement capability of the UiO-66/AuNPs nanocomposite and acting as a capture agent, we designed a cost-effective fluorescent aptasensor for cocaine detection. The cocaine presence in the sample would cause a considerable escalation in the quenching of the fluorescence signal. The aptasensor achieved the linear response range over 0.5 μM-20 μM with a low detection limit of 0.178 μM. The selectivity of the designed aptasensing assay was successfully confirmed by examining several analgesic drugs. The aptasensor was employed for cocaine determination in human serum as the real samples. This method has a substantial benefit the for development of a low-cost and facile tool in medicine and forensic science.

A simple tag-free fluorometric aptasensing assay for sensitive detection of kanamycin

A novel label-free and enzyme-free fluorescence aptasensing assay that uses Sybr Green I (SGI) as the signal indicator for the kanamycin determination was designed. An aptamer-complementary strand (Apt/CP) conjugate was formed, which provided the intercalation sites for SGI and, therefore, a considerable fluorescent signal. The introduction of the target led to the separation of Apt from CP due to the high affinity of Apt toward kanamycin. Hence, the suitable intercalation gaps reduced, which resulted in a decrease in the generated fluorescent signal. Under optimized conditions, a broad linear concentration range from 0.05 μM to 20 μM and a limit of detection of 11.76 nM were obtained, confirming the ability of the fabricated aptasensor for sensitive and specific kanamycin detection in real samples such as milk and human serum. The aptasensing method has the potential to be extensively employed in the food industry and veterinary science due to its simplicity, sensitivity, user-friendly, and capability of on-site detection of kanamycin.