Abstract:

In recent years, the events of arsenic contamination in foods arose frequently in China, which seriously threaten
human health and life safety and have gained high attention due to the harmfulness of arsenic. Although the traditional
analytical techniques enable detection of arsenic at low concentrations in foods, they have many shortcomings such as
expensive instruments, sophisticated sample pretreatment, high cost and professional operation. Thus, there is still the
necessity of developing a low-cost, simple and quick, accurate and efficient method for the detection of arsenic in foods.
Due to its characteristics such as simple operation, low detection cost, good selectivity, high sensitivity, rapid analysis and
continuous monitoring on-line in a complex system, biosensor technology is a new technology with long-term significance in
the field of food safety, and it is very suitable for rapid detection of arsenic contamination in food safety incident emergency
handling. In this article, the working mechanisms of biosensors based on E. coli, protein, DNA and aptamer as well as
the latest progress in their application for the detection of arsenic in foods are reviewed. Moreover, future applications of
biosensor technology in the field of food safety are also discussed.

Key words: arsenic, food safety, biosensor, detection