Abstract

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF IMMUNOASSAYS IN DETECTION OF FOOD TOXINS

Syed Javed Ali* and Vandana Pathak

Abstract

The study focuses on comparing different methods for detecting toxins in spoiled food products. The technique of enzyme linked immunesorbent assay was used for the detection of the enterotoxins in the food samples. Different methods were applied for the immunoassay that includes Direct, Indirect and Sandwich ELISA. Our results generally demonstrated high bacterial diversity across the ten fruit, vegetables and other eatable materials. We analyzed. Eight phylogenetically diverse phyla of bacteria (P.aeruginosa, B.cereus, S.aureus, S.typhii, Lactobacillus, E.coli, Shigella, L.monocytogenes) and their toxic proteins were targeted (exotoxin A, BDE, nuc gene, invA, SlpA, STEC, stx1c, p60). Our results generally demonstrated high bacterial diversity across the ten fruit, vegetables and other eatable materials. In the given sample of the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes the maximum concentration was observed for sample 10 at 3.4150 pg/ml (culture dependent) and 2.9566 pg/ml (culture Independent) for p60 protein. ELISA has become by far the most commonly employed method for in vitro detection of the toxin. Both results (culture dependent and independent) toxin detection showed not a very considerable difference.

Keywords: ELISA, toxin, imuunoassay, Listeria monocytogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, culture dependent.