Nanozyme: The innovation where precision meets sustainability.

Highlights –
Adopting nanozyme biosensor over expensive technology for precision monitoring of food adulterants.
precision monitoring of food adulterants.
Redefining sensitivity and specificity offered by nanozyme biosensors.
Future prospects of designing mobile app for data analysis offered by nanozyme biosensor.
Market strategies and business analysis are reviewed.
Nanozyme biosensor a sustainable solution for a greener future.

ABSTRACT

Food safety issues caused by food-borne pathogens, chemical pollutants, and heavy metals have aroused widespread concern because they are closely related to human health. The prevalence of food adulteration jeopardizes consumer health, erodes trust in food supply chain and undermines economical integrity. The public concerns about agri-food safety call for innovative and reformative analytical techniques to meet the inspection requirements of high sensitivity, specificity, sustainability and reproducibility. Enzyme-mimetic nanomaterials or nanozymes, which combine enzyme-like properties with nano-scale features emerge as an excellent tool for quality and safety detection in the food sector, due to not only their robust capacity in detection but also their attraction in future-oriented exploitations. Available quality evaluation methods such as Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy [SERS], Surface Plasmon Resonance [SPR], chromatography, Mass Spectrometry, HPLC used in industries are often expensive, time consuming, labor intensive and requires specialized infrastructure. This paper aims to tell about ground breaking innovation via Nanozyme biosensors in field of public health with futuristic approach for rapid, reliable and accurate detection of adulterants that may compromise food safety. The applications of the nanozyme-based biosensors in food safety screening have also been comprehensively summarized (including mycotoxins, antibiotics, pesticides, pathogens, intentional adulteration, metal ions, and others). In the end, current-model, research and application of Nanozymes in this promising field are tentatively proposed.

INTRODUCTION

Agriculture and food production are directly related to the survival and development of mankind. Food safety remains one of the most crucial issues globally because food could be contaminated at all stages including production, packaging, storage, transportation, and value-added processing, giving rise to outbreaks of food-borne diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that an estimated 600 million—almost 1 in10 people in the world—fall ill after eating contaminated food and 420,000 die every year, resulting in the loss of 33 million healthy life years (DALYs). Food hazards have a variety of-factors, such as plant, animal, and microbial metabolites, soil and water pollution hazards from the environment, and purposefully added illegal additives, generated during food packing and processing. Further, the potential possibility of food contamination has obviously increased because of the inadvertent entry of trace toxicants [1]. Thus, food safety remains a great global challenge to human health and food industry development. Furthermore, in the last decades, the detection of food contaminants has attracted extensive attention because it can be used to identify whether the food is safe. Thus far, a large number of conventional methods have been well established for the detection of food contaminants, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and so on. Although these methods show qualitative accuracy, and reliability for food contaminant detection but they are complicated, laborious, expensive and time consuming, particularly depending on the complex materials that can be used only by the well trained personnel. Thus, they are difficult to meet the needs of the fast and on-site screening of massive samples and require high-budget and technical application. Nanozyme biosensors can represent a ground breaking innovation in the field of public health with the futuristic approach for immediate, reliable and accurate detection of contaminants or adulterants of food and food products. Nanozymes are artificially synthesized, exhibit higher sensitivity, thus can detect lower concentration of analytes with precise measurement of trace substances. They are more stable and robust and can withstand a wider range of environmental conditions such as temperature variations, pH change and exposure to harsh chemicals without losing their performance. They possess longer life span and prolonged usability. The design flexibility allows for precise control over the properties including size, shape, surface chemistry and functionalization. They can facilitate simultaneous detection of multiple analytes like urea, ammonium sulfate, melamine, detergents, glucose, soy proteins, vegetable oils, bacteria, viruses, mycotoxins and many more in a same sample at a time. Miniaturized formats of nanozyme biosensor enable its integration into a compact and portable device, this facilitates on-site testing. The design Components of nanozyme biosensor involves, synthesis of nanozyme with high Catalytic efficacy, stability and specificity then functionalizing its surface with recognition elements that selectively bind to the target adulterants. Immobilize the nanozyme on modified biosensor surface, use an appropriate transducer to convert the catalytic activity of nanozyme into measurable signals, application of amplification strategies that enhance the detection of even low concentration of adulterants.