Foot and mouth disease is an economically important transboundary disease of wildlife and cloven hoofed animals including ruminants. In the absence of vaccination, detection of antibodies against structural proteins (SPs) of foot-and-mouth disease virus is an indicator of infection. In the present study, a rapid dot blot assay using gold nanoparticlees was developed for the detection of antibodies against SPs of FMDV. Commercially available FMD vaccine was used as a source of FMD antigen. After the synthesis of gold nanoparticles (GNPs), the GNP-dot blot assay was tested and was found very sensitive, as the detection of antibody was up to 10 of serum dilution. The GNP-dot assay was found specific as it didn't give dot with normal horse sera, fetal bovine sera and neonatal bovine calf serum samples when tested at 10 working dilution. When 30 serum samples from post-vaccinated buffaloes were tested at dilution of 10, all the samples were found positive with the variable intensity of dot. The synthesized GNPs and conjugated GNPS with antibody were characterized for their absorption limit, for their stability and for their approximate size. These characterized conjugated and non-conjugated GNPs were also analyzed by Transmission electron microscopy and Scanning electron microscopy. The GNP dot blot assay developed in this work gave promising results using vaccine antigen and can form an important tool for rapid diagnosis of FMD in FMD free countries, zones free of FMD and during last stage of FMD eradication when FMD vaccination will be withdrawn.

Animals play a vital role in our lives as they provide milk, meat, and other by-products for daily consumption. At the same time, their health directly/indirectly affects human beings as we both share a common environment. The One Health concept makes it imperative that the animals should remain healthy as it will have an impact on our health as well as economy. Animal disease diagnosis, their health monitoring, prevention, and control of diseases are important from this aspect. Tools for rapid diagnosis of animal diseases are crucial for early diagnosis and imposing control measures. Molecular techniques such as, genome sequencing, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), DNA microarray, PCR, and real-time PCR are some of the rapid techniques, but they need expertise and sophisticated labs. Conventional methods such as isolation of the pathogen, serological techniques, are laborious and time taking process. Therefore, to overcome the said limitations of conventional and molecular tools, biosensors are the better alternatives as they are rapid and can be used as pen-side diagnostic tests. They can provide test results in a few minutes under field conditions. In this chapter, we give an elaborative description of various types of biosensors and their utility in animal disease diagnostics and health monitoring.

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Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is an important transboundary disease of domestic and wild cloven hoofed animals. Both, innate and adaptive immunity play an important role in combating FMDV infection. Interferons, CD4+ helper cells and CD8+ cells are the key factors in developing anti-FMDV immunity inside host's body. In this review a detail of FMDV pathogenesis and anti-FMDV immunity has been discussed in detail.

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