Food safety concerns have become a significant threat
to human
health and well-being, catching global attention in recent years.
As a result, it is imperative to research conceptually novel biosensing
and effective techniques for food matrices detection. Currently, DNA-templated
metal nanoclusters (DNA-MNCs) are considered as one of the most promising
nanomaterials due to their excellent properties in biosensing. While
DNA-MNCs have garnered increasing interest, the reviews of design
strategies, applications, and futuristic prospects for biosensing
have been hardly found especially in food safety. The synthesis of
DNA-MNCs and their use as biosensing materials in food contamination
detection, including pathogenic bacteria, toxins, heavy metals, residues
of pesticides, and others were comprehensively reviewed. In addition,
we summarize the properties of DNA-MNCs briefly and discuss the challenges
and future trends. The application of DNA-MNCs powered biosensing
has been demonstrated and actively studied, which is a promising paradigm
for food safety testing that can supplement or even replace current
existing methods. Despite the challenges of difficulty regulating
accurately, poor stability, low quantum yield, and difficult commercial
transformation, the application prospects of DNA-MNCs biosensors are
promising. This review aims to provide insights and directions for
the future development of DNA-MNCs based food detection technology.