Advances in Nanozyme-Aptamer Systems for the Detection of Foodborne Pathogens

Food safety problems caused by foodborne pathogenic bacteria pose a serious threat to public health, creating an urgent need to develop testing methods and techniques with excellent performance and are simple to use and of affordable cost. Traditional testing methods, such as isolation and culture, morphological observation, biochemical identification, and serological tests, have many limitations, including complex procedures, reliance on specialized technical equipment and personnel, and long turnaround time, rendering them inadequate for meeting current and future testing demands. Therefore, it is particularly important to develop simple, rapid, and highly sensitive methods for analyzing pathogenic bacteria. The fusion of nucleic acid aptamers and nanozymes brings new ideas for the rapid testing of pathogenic bacteria. On one hand, aptamers offer specific recognition capability for target bacteria and can be combined with various nucleic acid signal amplification techniques. On the other hand, the enzyme-like catalytic activity and signal amplification effect of many nanomaterials provide a basis for highly sensitive testing. This review highlights the application potential of nanozyme‒aptamer coupling systems in the field of microbial analysis by briefly summarizing the latest research progress in the use of nanozymes combined with aptamers for the detection of foodborne pathogenic bacteria. First of all, two main approaches to conjugating nanozymes with aptamers are introduced. Then, the testing mechanisms and typical applications of nanozyme‒aptamer coupling systems for foodborne pathogenic bacteria are discussed. Finally, future development trends and existing challenges are disucssed from four perspectives, including specificity, high sensitivity, high throughput, and intelligent detection. This review aims to provide a useful reference for the fusion of nanozymes and aptamers and for the development of on-site rapid testing techniques for foodborne pathogens, and to encourage broader academic interest to further advance this promising research field.