Over the past few decades, pathogens have posed a threat
to human
security, and rapid identification of pathogens should be one of the
ideal methods to prevent major public health security outbreaks. Therefore,
there is an urgent need for highly sensitive and specific approaches
to identify and quantify pathogens. Clustered Regularly Interspaced
Short Palindromic Repeats CRISPR/Cas systems and Argonaute (Ago) belong
to the Microbial Defense Systems (MDS). The guided, programmable,
and targeted activation of nucleases by both of them is leading the
way to a new generation of pathogens detection. We compare these two
nucleases in terms of similarities and differences. In addition, we
discuss future challenges and prospects for the development of the
CRISPR/Cas systems and Argonaute (Ago) biosensors, especially electrochemical
biosensors. This review is expected to afford researchers entering
this multidisciplinary field useful guidance and to provide inspiration
for the development of more innovative electrochemical biosensors
for pathogens detection.