Marine toxins cause great harm to human health through seafood, therefore, it is urgent to exploit new marine toxins detection methods with the merits of high sensitivity and specificity, low detection limit, convenience, and high efficiency. Aptasensors have emerged to replace classical detection methods for marine toxins detection. The rapid development of molecular biological approaches, sequencing technology, material science, electronics and chemical science boost the preparation and application of aptasensors. Taken together, the aptamer-based biosensors would be the best candidate for detection of the marine toxins with the merits of high sensitivity and specificity, convenience, time-saving, relatively low cost, extremely low detection limit, and high throughput, which have reduced the detection limit of marine toxins from nM to fM. This article reviews the detection of marine toxins by aptamer-based biosensors, as well as the selection approach for the systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX), the aptamer sequences. Moreover, the newest aptasensors and the future prospective are also discussed, which would provide thereotical basis for the future development of marine toxins detection by aptasensors.
Keywords: SELEX; aptamers; biosensors; detection; marine toxins.