Passion fruit-inspired dendritic mesoporous silica nanospheres-enriched quantum dots coupled with magnetism-controllable aptasensor enable sensitive detection of ochratoxin A in food products

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a powerful mycotoxin present in a variety of food products, and its detection is important for human health. Here, a fluorescent aptasensor is reported for sensitive OTA determination. Specifically, the surface of bio-inspired passion fruit-like dendritic mesoporous silica nanospheres-enriched quantum dots (MSNQs-apt) was first modified with the OTA aptamer as the recognition unit and fluorescence emitter, while the aptamer-complementary DNA (MNPs-cDNA) was linked with the magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) as the separation element. In the range of 2.56 pg/mL to 8 ng/mL, the proposed aptasensor exhibited satisfactory linearity and a detection limit of 1.402 pg/mL. The developed aptasensor achieved recoveries of 90.98–103.20% and 94.33–107.57 % in red wine and wheat flour samples, respectively. By simply replacing the aptamer, this aptasensor can be easily extended to detection of other analytes, suggesting its potential as a universal detection platform for mycotoxins in food products.