A smartphone-integrated portable fluorescent biosensor for on-site detection of antibiotics

The widespread antibiotic residues pose significant risks for public health, food and environmental safety, necessitating rapid on-site monitoring tools, while conventional methods for antibiotics detection often rely on complex instrumentation, limiting their field applicability. This study presented a versatile portable aptasensor utilizing pseudoisocyanine (PIC) fluorescent dye for different antibiotics detection. The sensing mechanism was based on target-induced displacement of the dye from the aptamer-dye complex, resulting in fluorescence quenching. The interactions among PIC, aptamer and antibiotics were investigated and discussed.

The biosensing system using a microplate reader was optimized for detection of vancomycin (VAN), oxytetracycline (OTC) and kanamycin (KAN) using their corresponding aptamers, achieving the detection limits of 88.3 nM, 187.0 nM and 316.3 nM, respectively. Subsequently, the assay was integrated with a customized 3D-printed device with smartphone-based readout, enabling on-site quantitative detection with acceptable performance for field applications compared to the microplate reader-based detection. The biosensor demonstrated highly specific and accurate detection of the three antibiotics in spiked lake water and milk samples, with the recoveries ranging from 93.24% to 106.54%. Meanwhile, the reasons for the significant difference in the performance of fluorescent biosensors employing different targets/aptamers were preliminarily discussed.

This label-free assay together with the rationally designed portable device provide a cost-effective, instrument-free, and user-friendly platform for rapid monitoring of antibiotic residues in resource-limited settings, while the mechanism discussion may instruct the design of fluorescent aptasensors.