The Role of Suspension Array Technology in Rapid Detection of Foodborne Pollutants: Applications and Future Challenges

"Emerging technologies for detecting foodborne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms in milk: Ensuring safety and quality"

Foodborne and spoilage microorganisms pose significant challenges to both food safety and product integrity, particularly within the dairy industry. These microorganisms can adversely affect milk quality, safety, shelf life, and the overall sustainability of the dairy industry, making their detection a critical concern in food science. This review explores a range of emerging and innovative detection techniques, including molecular, immunological, and sensor-based methods, with a focus on their practical implementation in dairy microbiology. While culture-based methods remain the gold standard, they suffer from several limitations, including being time-consuming, labor-intensive, costly, and less effective at detecting non-culturable microorganisms. Recent advancements in rapid, high-throughput, and high-sensitivity detection technologies have transformed the ability to identify and control both foodborne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms in milk, offering superior accuracy, efficiency, and real-time monitoring capabilities. This review provides a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge microbial detection approaches in milk, highlighting the key characteristics of these emerging methods developed in recent years. Furthermore, global regulatory standards in milk microbiology among eight representative countries were comparatively analyzed to elucidate the current landscape of dairy microbiology regulatory frameworks. Our primary objective is to synthesize current scientific research to offer insights into the effectiveness, practicality, and industry adoption of these emerging detection technologies. We critically examine studies that have contributed to the development of rapid and accurate microbial detection methods, assessing their impact on food safety, quality assurance, and regulatory compliance. By consolidating and analyzing cutting-edge advancements in microbial detection, this review aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to strengthen both food safety and quality assurance in the dairy industry by integrating novel detection technologies into routine monitoring practices. We aim to provide a valuable resource for researchers, industry professionals, and policymakers, facilitating informed decision-making and promoting the adoption of effective microbial detection strategies from dairy farms to consumer products.

Current Progress of Ratiometric Fluorescence Sensors Based on Carbon Dots in Foodborne Contaminant Detection

Carbon dots (CDs) are widely used in the detection of foodborne contaminants because of their biocompatibility, photoluminescence stability, and ease of chemical modification. In order to solve the interference problem of complexity in food matrices, the development of ratiometric fluorescence sensors shows great prospects. In this review, the progress of ratiometric fluorescence sensors based on CDs in foodborne contaminant detection in recent years will be summarized, focusing on the functionalized modification of CDs, the fluorescence sensing mechanism, the types of ratiometric fluorescence sensors, and the application of portable devices. In addition, the outlook on the development of the field will be presented, with the development of smartphone applications and related software helping to better enable the on-site detection of foodborne contaminants to ensure food safety and human health.

Molecularly Imprinted Ratiometric Fluorescence Nanosensors

Molecularly imprinted ratiometric fluorescence (MIR-FL) nanosensors feature recognition selectivity, detection sensitivity, application universality, visualization accuracy, and device portability, and have gained popularity. However, the fluorescence intensity, nanostructure, color range, and practical application of the sensor still face severe difficulties to be solved. New strategies combined with various technologies have been developed to construct MIR-FL nanosensors for expanded applications. This Perspective highlights current resarch challenges and future prospects involving constructions and applications of MIR-FL nanosensors including dual-emission and triple-emission modes. The postimprinting mixing/modification strategies, microdevices, and multitarget detection are focused, and technology synergy, sensitivity/reproducibility improvement, application diversity/portability, etc. are proposed.

Research progress on detection techniques for point-of-care testing of foodborne pathogens

The global burden of foodborne disease is enormous and foodborne pathogens are the leading cause of human illnesses. The detection of foodborne pathogenic bacteria has become a research hotspot in recent years. Rapid detection methods based on immunoassay, molecular biology, microfluidic chip, metabolism, biosensor, and mass spectrometry have developed rapidly and become the main methods for the detection of foodborne pathogens. This study reviewed a variety of rapid detection methods in recent years. The research advances are introduced based on the above technical methods for the rapid detection of foodborne pathogenic bacteria. The study also discusses the limitations of existing methods and their advantages and future development direction, to form an overall understanding of the detection methods, and for point-of-care testing (POCT) applications to accurately and rapidly diagnose and control diseases.

Suspension array for multiplex immunoassay of five common endocrine disrupter chemicals

A low cost and effective indirect competitive method is reported to detect five EDCs, 17-beta-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), bisphenol A (BPA), diethylstilbestrol (DES), and nonylphenol (NP) simultaneously, based on suspension array technology (SAT). Five kinds of complete antigens (E2-BSA, E3-BSA, BPA-BSA, DES-BPA, NP-BSA) were coupled to different encoding microspheres using purpose-made solutions in our laboratory instead of commercially available amino coupling kits; the method was further optimized for determination and reducing  the cost. Encoding and signaling fluorescence of the particles are determined at 635/532 nm emission wavelengths. High-throughput curves of five EDCs were draw and the limit of detection (LOD) were between 0.0010 ng mL^-1 ~ 0.0070 ng mL^-1. Compared with traditional ELISA methods, the SAT exhibited better specificity and sensitivity. Experiments using spiked milk and tap water samples were also carried out, and the recovery was between 85 and 110%; the results also confirmed good repeatability and reproducibility. It illustrated great potential of the present strategy in the detection of EDCs in actual samples.