AMPLIFICATION-BY-POLYMERIZATION IN BIOSENSING FOR VISUAL DETECTION OF PEANUT ALLERGENS

Detection of peanut allergens in food plays an important role to protect individuals with peanut allergy and to reduce food manufacturers' risk and cost caused by product recall in case of the presence of peanut allergens. So far, the most popular allergen detection method is Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) which relies on a specific antibody to bind to the target antigen analyte, but this method depends on expensive bioreagents (antibodies, enzymes, tags, etc.) and is time-consuming and laboring. An advantageous alternate method relies upon biosensing, which has become a rapidly growing field expanding from the health-care industry to food safety control. The long-term goal of this proposed collaborative research is to develop a biosensing-based, simple, robust, inexpensive, rapid, and sensitive peanut allergen detection platform to protect individuals with peanut allergy from accidental/unintentional exposure. This platform uses real-time molecular growth via an Amplification-by-Polymerization (AbP) process to achieve label-free and detector-free allergenic protein detection. The proposed research will be conducted by accomplishing two supporting objectives: (1) proof-of-concept of peanut allergenic protein detection using reversible-deactivation radical polymerizations and (2) sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy optimizations for the developed biosensing method validation, performance comparison with commercially available ELISA kits, and further development into a multiplexed bioassay. The proposed project aims to address Food Safety and Defense (A1332) Program Area Priority by developing a novel biosensing technique, i.e., AbP in biosensing, for the rapid and efficient detection of peanut allergens in different food products.