Integration of Laccase-like Nanozymes and Sensing Strategies for Food Quality and Safety Monitoring

Laccase-like nanozymes (LLNs) are a class of functional nanomaterials inspired by natural laccases. Due to their excellent catalytic performance, structural tunability, and superior stability, LLNs have emerged as promising tools for food quality and safety monitoring. This review establishes a critical structure-activity-application framework for LLNs, correlating bioinspired and structural engineering strategies, with the regulation of active sites, electronic structures, and catalytic microenvironments, and, ultimately, with their analytical performance in food matrices. Key insights are provided into how LLNs are integrated with colorimetric, fluorometric, electrochemical, and multimodal sensing platforms. Furthermore, particular emphasis is placed on their applications in food quality monitoring, including the detection of bioactive markers, freshness monitoring of meat products, authentication and adulteration analysis of tea, and assessment of other quality-relevant parameters. For food safety, the sensitive detection of mycotoxins, pesticide and antibiotic residues, and food additives is specifically highlighted. Despite these advances, challenges remain in elucidating catalytic mechanisms and active-site structures, establishing standardized evaluation criteria, and improving selectivity and reliability in complex food matrices. Future research should therefore focus on rational active-site engineering, in situ mechanistic characterization, standardized performance evaluation, and the integration of LLNs with multi-mode, portable, and intelligent sensing technologies to facilitate practical food analysis.