Conclusions
Food safety is an ever-growing concern for regulators,
consumers and the food industry. The ability to detect foodborne
pathogens and toxins in low concentrations is highly
needed to ensure the production and distribution of safe
food products. Conventional microbiological methods are
deficient in sensitivity and specificity, and are often slow
due to laborious, time-consuming protocols that are constrained
to current technology. Coupling QDs to nucleic
acid specific MBs or other biomolecules allows for higher
specificity and for the accurate detection of target pathogen.
QDs have emerged as a leading choice for their photostability,
large effective Stokes shifts, sustained fluorescence, and
narrow emission and wider excitation bandwidths