Phycotoxins or marine toxins cause massive harm to humans, livestock, and pets. Current strategies based on ordinary methods are long time-wise and require expert operators, and are not reliable for on-site and real-time use. Therefore, it is urgent to exploit new detection methods for marine toxins with high sensitivity and specificity, low detection limits, convenience, and high efficiency. Conversely, biosensors can distinguish poisons with less response time and higher selectivity than the common strategies. Aptamer-based biosensors (aptasensors) are potent for environmental monitoring, especially for on-site and real-time determination of marine toxins and freshwater microorganisms, and with a degree of superiority over other biosensors, making them worth considering. This article reviews the designed aptasensors based on the different strategies for detecting the various phycotoxins.
Keywords: aptamer; biosensor; nanomaterial; on-site detection; phycotoxin; portable.