HCR signal amplification strategy based photothermal sensing for histamine detection

In this study, a novel photothermal sensing platform was established for the visual, portable, and quantitative detection of histamine. This approach is built based on a hybridization chain reaction (HCR) as a nucleic acid amplification strategy, which is triggered by histamine. CuS@Au nanocomposites were synthesized through a hydrothermal method and utilized as the photothermal transduction material, which displayed excellent photothermal conversion performance, effectively converting histamine concentration into a measurable temperature variation. Under optimized conditions, the temperature difference (ΔT) presented a favorable linear relationship with histamine concentration in a range of 10 pM-10 µM, with a detection limit as low as 0.82 pM. Moreover, the practicality of this method was successfully verified by detecting histamine spiked in fish and shrimp meat samples. The developed sensing platform shows considerable potential for applications in food safety monitoring and public health protection.