Applications of Nanobodies in Mycotoxin Detection

Abstract

Mycotoxins, as secondary metabolites produced by fungi, are a common threat to food safety and are hazardous to human and livestock health. Mycotoxin contamination of agricultural products causes significant economic losses worldwide. Therefore, it is particularly urgent to develop technologies for mycotoxins detection, degradation, and controlling their contamination. Immunoassays, which use antibodies, are now commonly used for the detection and largescale screening of mycotoxins in agricultural products. As a new type of antibody, nanobodies have a small size, easy expression in vitro, and high stability compared to traditional monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. Therefore, they are widely used in mycotoxin detection technologies. In this review, we summarize the development of nanobodies for common mycotoxins (aflatoxin, ochratoxin, fumonisin, zearalenone, deoxynivalenol, etc.) detection, focus on the applications of antim ycotoxin and anti-idiotypic nanobodies in the context of several immunoassay methods, mainly compare the detecti on parameters such as half inhibition rate, detection limit, and linear range. We further describe the advantages and disadvantages of detection technologies based on anti-mycotoxin and anti-idiotypic nanobodies and discuss the key issues in the development of mycotoxin detection methods, such as the difficulty of developing new nanobodies and the small number of detectable mycotoxins when using current methods. Moreover, we point out the future directions of applying rational design, directed evolution, and peptide screen and design methods to develop nanobody variants and propose potential avenues for the future development of nanobody-based mycotoxin detection technologies.

Keywords

• mycotoxins
• nanobody
• immunoassay
• agricultural products
• detection technology
• ic50
• detection limit