Review Article Spore based biosensors for detection of contaminants in milk: A review

Milk and milk products comprise essential nutrients for all age groups. Ensuring the quality and safety of dairy products is mandatory objective of the dairy industry. Bacterial spores are amongst the hardiest forms of life and can be used as biosensing elements for detection of contaminants in milk. The presence of microbial and non-microbial contaminants in milk affects the life cycle of bacterial spores and hence can be exploited as platform for the exclusive detection of aforementioned in milk. This review focuses on the application of bacterial spores as biosensing system for contaminants in milk system. Furthermore, we have focused our attention on the discussion of principal concepts of spore structure and spore germination and examples of spore based detection systems that have been achieved up until now to detect potential contaminants such as antibiotics, aflatoxins and pathogens like Listeria monocytogenes and the hygiene indicator Enterococci in milk in our laboratory. Depending on the type of sensing system, the quantitative response to the presence of target analyte based on germination or inhibition of spores could be obtained as quickly as in 3–4 hrs. The developed spore based sensing systems can detect the target analyte within the detection limits as prescribed by the various regulatory authorities, in the milk samples. Spore based biosensing systems enables the rapid and sensitive detection of the analytes and is expected to facilitate the on-site use of such sensing systems.