Aptamer Molecular Beacon Sensor for Rapid and Sensitive Detection of Ochratoxin A

Overview

Journal Molecules

Publisher MDPI

Specialty Biology

Date 2022 Dec 11

PMID 36500359

Authors

Hao Yu

Qiang Zhao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a carcinogenic fungal secondary metabolite which causes wide contamination in a variety of food stuffs and environments and has a high risk to human health. Developing a rapid and sensitive method for OTA detection is highly demanded in food safety, environment monitoring, and quality control. Here, we report a simple molecular aptamer beacon (MAB) sensor for rapid OTA detection. The anti-OTA aptamer has a fluorescein (FAM) labeled at the 5' end and a black hole quencher (BHQ1) labeled at the 3' end. The specific binding of OTA induced a conformational transition of the aptamer from a random coil to a duplex-quadruplex structure, which brought FAM and BHQ1 into spatial proximity causing fluorescence quenching. Under the optimized conditions, this aptamer sensor enabled OTA detection in a wide dynamic concentration range from 3.9 nM to 500 nM, and the detection limit was about 3.9 nM OTA. This method was selective for OTA detection and allowed to detect OTA spiked in diluted liquor and corn flour extraction samples, showing the capability for OTA analysis in practical applications.

Citing Articles

Advances in Aptamer-Based Conjugate Recognition Techniques for the Detection of Small Molecules in Food.

Deng X, Ma B, Gong Y, Li J, Zhou Y, Xu T Foods. 2024; 13(11).

PMID: 38890976 PMC: 11172347. DOI: 10.3390/foods13111749.

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