Biosensors For Food Toxin Detection: Carbon Nanotubes And Graphene
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BIOSENSORS FOR FOOD TOXIN DETECTION: CARBON NANOTUBES AND GRAPHENE Bansi D. Malhotra1, 2, Saurabh Srivastava1, Shine Augustine1 1 Department of Biotechnology, Delhi Technological University, Delhi 110042, India 2 Department of Science & Technology Centre on Biomolecular Electronics, CSIR-National Physical Laboratory Dr K.S.Krishnan Marg, New Delhi 110012, India ABSTRACT There is increased interest towards the application of carbon based nanomaterials to biosensors since these can be used to quickly detect presence of the toxins in food, agricultural and environmental systems. The accurate, faster and early detection of food toxins is presently very important for ensuring safety and shelf life of agricultural commodities resulting from food contamination. The carbon materials (CNTs) and recently discovered graphene have been predicted to be promising candidates in the development of electrochemical biosensor owing to their exceptionally large surface area and interesting electrochemical properties. We focus on some of the recent results obtained in our laboratories pertaining to the development of biosensors based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes and graphene for mycotoxin(aflatoxin ) detection. Keywords: Mycotoxins, Carbon nanotubes, Graphene, Electrochemical biosensor *Corresponding Author: [email protected] 1. INTRODUCTION Food toxin is a substance that is synthesized by plant species, animal, and microorganisms and has adverse effect on human and animal health and environment pathogens1-15. The food toxins can be broadly categorized into four major groups (i) plant toxins (ii) bacterial pathogens and toxins (iii)phycotoxins and (iv) mycotoxins. The plant toxins are poisonous compounds extracted from certain plants including phenolics, terpenoids, alkaloids, glycosides etc. compounds. Bacterial pathogens and toxins are major cause of foodborne diseases. Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, syphilis, and leprosy are some of the major consequences of food Mycotoxins are secondary fungal metabolites produced mainly by Aspergillus fungi that grow in a variety of foodstuffs like cereals, coffee, wine, fruits and dry nuts under certain condition and are potentially hazardous to animals 1. More than 500 different mycotoxins are currently known among which aflatoxins, ochratoxins, fumonisins, patulin and trichothecenes, are considered important 2. Contamination by mycotoxins is a real problem, not only because of economical losses, but especially because of the serious human and animal health problems that their ingestion may cause. Such problems include liver and kidney diseases, nervous system damage, immunosuppression and carcinogenicity 3. Phycotoxins (marine toxins/shellfish toxins) are the secondary metabolites produced by toxicogenic microalgae. Phycotoxins may enter into the marine food chain as components of the phytoplankton and be transmitted to humans by contaminated seafood. Although marine toxins do not entail a risk for shellfish, they are of concern for human health. The detection and identific
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