New Age Detection of Viruses: The Nano-Biosensors

Abstract

Viruses and their related diseases have always posed a significant hazard to humans. The current pandemic caused by the Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) virus is the latest illustration of what this tiny organism can do to humanity at large, putting everything on the brink of collapse. So it is reasonable that early diagnosis of infection from viruses remains a crucial step to prevent such human suffering. Many traditional methods are already in use for detecting viruses, including molecular approaches, serological methods, direct virus culture methods, and so on. Such traditional methods though are brilliant at some stages but are not devoid of drawbacks. To overcome the limits of conventional procedures, new techniques have been developed which tried to eradicate the demerits of the former procedures. Biosensors have come up with a lot of promises in terms of detecting viruses and diseases connected with them. The development of various types of such biosensors such as Affinity-based nano-biosensors, Nanoisland affinity-based biosensors, Graphene affinity-based biosensors, Nanowires based biosensors, Optical nano biosensors, Fiber optic nano-biosensors, Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) based optical nano-biosensors, Total internal reflection fluorescence, Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS), Electrochemical nano-biosensors had helped us in the rapid and sensitive detection of viruses. Aid to these nanosensors, viral detection now becomes very sensitive, rapid and cost has come down to a significant low. In this review, an attempt has been made to compile all of the different nano-biosensors and their applications. Due attention is given to the fact that the reader gets the grasp of the concept with much ease.

Nanotechnology and COVID-19: Prevention, diagnosis, vaccine, and treatment strategies

“…This optical biosensor contains a gold nanostructure on a glass substrate. In the future, it is foreseen to develop a biosensor that can be used in busy places to determine the presence of coronavirus in the environment and measure its concentration in the air in real time, and the recorded data will be sent wirelessly and monitored in real time (Shand et al, 2022).…”

Development of nanobiosensors for human immunodeficiency virus detection—a mini review

“…A biosensor detects explicitly the biological elements like whole cells, DNA, enzymes, peptides, cytokines, proteins, etc. by exploiting different properties of materials like magnetic properties, electrical properties, optical properties, and chemical properties [20,21].…”

“…Photonic crystal (PC) nanostructured optical biosensor was used for HIV detection, and it used a 384-well microplate and the substrate involved was elastic polyester. This was a very effective method for HIV diagnosis [21,32]. Shafiee et al [33], in their study, developed a PC nanostructured optical biosensor that can perform the detection and quantification of HIV-1 from human biological samples.…”

An overview of electrochemical biosensors used for COVID-19 detection

“…However, voltammetric techniques may present limitations in detecting very low concentrations of analytes, which can be a disadvantage in applications that require high sensitivity, in addition to the necessity to use an electrochemical probe to carry out the measurements. [57][58][59] Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is a technique that can also be used to investigate interfacial properties related to biorecognition events that occur on the electrode surface. This technique has the advantage of requiring a small perturbation of the steady-state amplitude to detect changes in the charge transfer resistance (R ct ) or capacitance value.…”

“…However, voltammetric techniques may present limitations in detecting very low concentrations of analytes, which can be a disadvantage in applications that require high sensitivity, in addition to the necessity to use an electrochemical probe to carry out the measurements. 57–59…”