The use of the broad-spectrum antibiotic chloramphenicol (CAP) in food is strictly regulated or banned in many countries. Herein, for the sensitive, rapid, and specific detection of CAP in milk, a label-free fluorescence strategy was established based on guanine (G)-quadruplex/N-methyl mesoporphyrin IX (NMM) complex formation and hybridization chain reaction (HCR) amplification. In this system, CAP can specifically bind to an aptamer (Apt) to release an Apt-C sequence from double-stranded DNA (Apt·Apt-C). Apt-C, can further hybridize with a functional hairpin DNA probe to release a primer sequence. The released primer sequence causes HCR and the formation of a nicked double-helix polymer, which contains G-quadruplex DNA. The recognition of G-quadruplex DNA by the NMM fluorochrome results in fluorescence enhancement. Consequently, CAP can be quantitatively detected by measuring the fluorescence intensity at 612 nm. The reliability of the aptasensor method was confirmed by comparison with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The proposed aptasensor was found to have a limit of detection of 0.8 pg mL-1 for CAP. Moreover, when the aptasensor was applied to the detection of CAP in milk samples, the average recoveries were 99.8-108.3% with relative standard deviations of 4.5-5.2%. Thus, this CAP detection method, which is rapid with high sensitivity and selectivity, has considerable potential for a wide range of food analysis applications.
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