Novel biosensor techniques for analysis of food contaminants and clinical analytes

Abstract

Public health standard depends on the quality of food products. Apart from beneficial newlineconstituents, food products also contain contaminants that are toxic in nature and can cause newlineinfections and diseases. Defining human exposure to various contaminants like chemicals (urea), newlinebiochemical (antibiotics), or biological (bacteria) is an enormous task. Conventional techniques newlineare not capable of providing high-throughput and sensitive detection of these contaminants, newlineespecially in milk, water and clinical analytes i.e. urine. Current analytical techniques do not newlineprovide any reliable platform, capable of analyzing complex food matrix such as milk. Hence, newlinethere is a need for reliable detection technique to quantify the analytes in the given matrix. newlineBiosensors have proved to be extremely reliable tools in complementing existing analytical newlinemethodologies in the detection and monitoring of an ever-increasing number of contaminants in newlinefood and water. Therefore, development of novel biosensor techniques capable of detecting the newlinecontaminants below or within permissible limits in these matrices is important (Chapter 1). newlineAdulteration of milk with synthetic chemicals is a serious concern for human health. Urea newlineis commonly used as an adulterant, which decreases the nutritive value of the milk. Adulteration newlineof milk with urea is hazardous and cause irreversible damage to the organs. Thus, regulatory newlineauthorities like Food Safety and Standards Authorities of India (FSSAI) have set permissible newlinelimit of 18 40 mg/dL for urea in the milk. Among the reported biosensor techniques, thermal newlinebiosensors are good alternative devices owing to their simplicity of operation and long-term newlinestability. Availability of numerous enzymes and their well-defined specificity combines with the newlineexothermic nature of many enzymatic reactions make it possible to develop thermal biosensor newlinefor detecting a wide range of biomolecules. Among the various reported transducers, enzyme newlinethermistor (ET) has been extensively used over past 4 decades and acknowledged as one.