Biosensors & bioelectronicsOct 18, 2025

Highly sensitive detection of aflatoxin B1 using a CRISPR-enhanced sensor with gold-platinum porphyrin material

CRISPR Gene Editing Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Jan 1, 2026

Abstract

The developed electrochemiluminescence sensor for aflatoxin B1 detection has a detection limit of 0.044 pg mL.

The sensor integrates a nanoparticle-functionalized aluminum-organic gel with a CRISPR/Cas12a amplification module.
It demonstrates strong ECL emission at a low triggering potential of -0.8 V, improving upon previous high-potential designs.
In situ enriched AuPt nanoparticles serve as a catalyst, enhancing the sensor's ECL signal through increased coreactant interactions.
A synergistic pre-amplification approach significantly boosts the cleavage efficiency of the CRISPR/Cas12a system.
The sensor shows a linear detection range from 0.1 pg mL to 500 ng mL, surpassing many existing sensors for aflatoxin B1.

Simplified

Herein, an ultrasensitive low-potential electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensor was developed by integrating an AuPt nanoparticle-functionalized porphyrin aluminum-organic gel (P-AlOG@AuPt) emitter with an enhanced CRISPR/Cas12a amplification module for the detection of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) related to food safety. Impressively, the P-AlOG@AuPt emitter exhibited strong ECL emission and high signal-to-noise ratio at a low triggering potential (-0.8 V), addressing key limitations of previous high-potential aluminum-organic gels. Meanwhile, the in situ enriched AuPt as a coreaction accelerator catalyzed the reduction of coreactant SOto produce abundant SOfor facilitating its interactions with P-AlOG@AuPt, resulting in a significant ECL enhancement. Furthermore, a synergistic catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) pre-amplification and tetrahedral DNA nanostructure (TDN)-anchored ssDNA reporters significantly improved the cleavage efficiency of CRISPR/Cas12a, boosting the detection sensitivity of the ECL sensor for AFB1. The established ECL sensor exhibited ultrasensitive detection of AFB1 with a linear range of 0.1 pg mL- 500 ng mLand detection limit of 0.044 pg mL, outperforming most reported ECL- and CRISPR-based AFB1 sensors. The practical usability of the proposed ECL sensor was verified by applying it for the quantification of AFB1 in rice samples. This work offers a promising low-potential ECL sensing platform for practical mycotoxin monitoring and broader biosensing applications. 2 8 4 2-•-•--1 -1 -1

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Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Highly sensitive detection of aflatoxin B1 using a CRISPR-enhanced sensor with gold-platinum porphyrin material

Abstract

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