Trypsin Detection Strategies: A Review

Trypsin, a pancreatic serine protease, due to its narrow specificity and selectivity, has been tremendously used in food technology, proteome analysis, modulating soy protein allergenicity, antihypertensive peptide production, as well as, a biomarker in diseases such as pancreatitis, cystic fibrosis etc. Therefore, simple, sensitive and selective biosensors, for trypsin evaluation, are strongly recommended. This review provides, for the first time, an overview of various sensing systems, developed for the detection of trypsin. We have categorized various sensors, developed in the last ten years, according to their signal output as optical (fluorescence, colorimeter, surface plasmon resonance, liquid crystals), electrochemical (photo-electrochemical, nanopore sensors), piezoelectric and enzyme linked immunosorbant assay based sensors. Under each section, further subsections explain, construction of biosensors on the basis of various natural proteins acting as substrate unit and nucleic acids, nanoparticles, inorganic dyes, polymers etc. as participant interacting units. Their working principles and strategies along with salient features, such as, limit of detection, linearity range, time etc. have been critically analyzed to highlight their comparative merits and demerits. The most sensitive biosensors for trypsin detection is a photo-electrochemical anti-trypsin based immunosensor, with a lowest limit of detection 0.02 ng mL−1; linearity 0.10–100 ng mL−1.