Biosensors and Rapid Testing Bio-Analytical Platforms for Food and Water Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Recent serious food-borne disease outbreaks and fear for bioterrorist attacks have led to increased public awareness and concern over food-borne illness and contaminated (drinking) water. This has resulted in consumer demands for intensified safety control of food and water regarding biological (bacteria, parasites, fungi) and non-biological agents (toxins, chemicals). Conventional analysis methods for non-biological contaminants like antibiotics, toxins, and pharmaceutical residues comprise high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), liquid (LC)-and gas chromatography (GC) in combination with different detection techniques and enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). While widely used in analysis laboratories HPLC, LC and GC are rarely applied in on-line monitoring or as early warning system. This is because of the sophisticated instrumentation which is not portable; and the laborious and complex sample pre-treatment (e.g. derivatization). ELISAs are well established and easy to use, but lack multiplexing capability and suffer from low sensitivity regarding bacteria detection (LODs are about 1000 cfu/g), while molecular methods and standard microbiological tests are accurate, but extremely time-consuming (several days), hence not appropriate for emergency testing.

Thus for rapid testing bio-analytical platforms, such as DNA and protein sensors that are simple in design and handling, portable and highly sensitive to allow for real-time quantification within the required measurement range are urgently needed.
This special issue will address such biosensor systems for food and water analysis.

Dr. Claudia Preininger
Guest Editor