Quantification of shellfish Arginine kinases by double-enhanced immunoassay employing magnetic beads and gold nanoparticles as carrier

Arginine Kinases (AK), known as the major allergen in shellfish, has gained increasing concerns in industrialized countries. Here, we proposed a simple but accurate analytical immunoassay that employed gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and magnetic beads (MBs) for tracing and quantification of AK in shellfish. The limit of detection (LOD) was 3.91 ng ml −1 (S/N = 3), while the limit of quantitation (LOQ) was 13.04 ng ml −1 (S/N = 10), respectively. Moreover, promising recoveries (94.6%–106.8%) were obtained for the determination of AK in foodstuffs, indicating the good accuracy of this method. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that this method is capable of quantification of AK from nine different shellfish species. Therefore, the double-enhanced immunoassay with simple sample preparation procedures and user-friendly operation showed high applicability for allergen detection in shellfish related foodstuffs and production lines. Furthermore, the developed method can be employed to identify the adulteration of shellfish products using AK as biomarker due to the less conserved sequences of AK in phylogenetically different species.