A surface plasmon resonance based biochip for the detection of patulin toxin

Patulin is a toxic secondary metabolite of a number of fungal species belonging to the genera Penicillium and Aspergillus. One important aspect of the patulin toxicity in vivo is an injury of the gastrointestinal tract including ulceration and inflammation of the stomach and intestine. Recently, patulin has been shown to be genotoxic by causing oxidative damage to the DNA, and oxidative DNA base modifications have been considered to play a role in mutagenesis and cancer initiation. Conventional analytical methods for patulin detection involve chromatographic analyses, such as HPLC, GC, and, more recently, techniques such as LC/MS and GC/MS. All of these methods require the use of extensive protocols and the use of expensive analytical instrumentation. In this work, the conjugation of a new derivative of patulin to the bovine serum albumin for the production of polyclonal antibodies is described, and an innovative competitive immune-assay for detection of patulin is presented. Experimentally, an important part of the detection method is based on the optical technique called surface plasmon resonance (SPR). Laser beam induced interactions between probe and target molecules in the vicinity of gold surface of the biochip lead to the shift in resonance conditions and consequently to slight but easily detectable change of reflectivity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.