Current trends in biosensors for biotoxins (mycotoxins, marine toxins, and bacterial food toxins):principles, application, and perspective

Biotoxins, particularly mycotoxins, marine toxins, and bacterial food toxins, have emerged as major threats in food, feed, seafood, and medicine fields. They have potential carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic effects on humans, occasionally causing high mortality and morbidity. One of the evident issues is related to the ever-growing use of fast food and demand for prepared food without proper acknowledgment of associated toxins. Hence, developing better methods for monitoring biotoxins is of great significance. Recently, biosensors have been increasingly used due to their simple and quick detection procedure, less sample volume, low cost, and so on. This study aimed to extrapolate the application of biosensors in biotoxin detection in recent years, with particular emphasis on their optical, electrochemical, piezoelectric, and photothermal applications. Further, different detection platforms were integrated as multimodal combination biosensors for biotoxins to meet the requirement of highly accurate technologies. This study examined the major challenges faced by biosensors and provided novel insights for improving the technology in food safety.