FRET-based innovative assays for precise detection of the residual heavy metals in food and agriculture-related matrices

As one of the serious threats to food safety and public health, heavy metal contamination in food and agriculture-related matrices has aroused serious concern for the public and needs to be solved urgently. In this regard, it is important to focus on developing ingenious assays for facile, reliable, efficient, and accurate reporting the residual levels of heavy metals in food and agriculture-related matrices. Recently, with the prosperous progress of fluorescence assays, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based assays have been emerging as one of the most promising analytical tools to recognize and quantify the fouling of heavy metals in food and agriculture-related matrices, which exhibits a simple, rapid, cost-effective, reliable, stable, sensitive, selective, and real-time way. Regarding the vast endeavors that have been contributed in this field up to now, we here summarize the recent advances of FRET-based innovative assays for reporting the contamination of heavy metals (e.g., Hg, Cu, Pb, Fe, Ag, Cd, Cr, As, U, and their mixture) in complicated food and agriculture-related matrices, point out the unavoidable challenges, and propose the future perspectives. This review might give important insights for developing effective warning-early mechanisms, management strategies, and commercial FRET-based point-of-care assays toward heavy metal contamination in food and agriculture-related matrices, safeguarding food safety and public health.