Traditional methods for identifying food-borne pathogens are time-consuming and laborious, so it is necessary to develop innovative
methods for the rapid identification of food-borne pathogens. Here, we report the development of silicon-based optical thin-film
biosensor chips for sensitive detection of 11 food-borne pathogens. Briefly, aldehyde-labeled probes were arrayed and covalently
attached to a hydrazine-derivatized chip surface, and then, biotinylated polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplicons were hybridized
with the probes. After washing and brief incubation with an antibiotin immunoglobulin G–horseradish peroxidase conjugate and
a precipitable horseradish peroxidase substrate, biotinylated chains bound to the probes were visualized as a color change
on the chip surface (gold to blue/purple). Highly sensitive and accurate examination of PCR fragment targets can be completed
within 30 min. This assay is extremely robust, sensitive, specific, and economical and can be adapted to different throughputs.
Thus, a rapid, sensitive, and reliable technique for detecting 11 food-borne pathogens was successfully developed.
Keywords Food-borne pathogen - Optical thin-film biosensor chip - Microarray - Detection
Sulan Bai and Jinyi Zhao had equal contribution to this work.