“…The mouse bioassay is very sensitive and can detect as little as 0.03 ng of botulinum toxin (1 ng = 30 mouse 50% lethal doses) within 6-96 h Johnson, 1990, 1992). Several different immunoassays have been developed for BoTN-A detection including, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) (Ferreira et al, 2004;Guglielmo-Viret et al, 2005;Han et al, 2007;Keller et al, 1999;Peruski et al, 2002;Sharma et al, 2006), lateral flow (Gessler et al, 2007;Sharma et al, 2005), immunomagnetic beads (Gessler et al, 2006;Rivera et al, 2006), immunoaffinity column (Attree et al, 2007;Gessler et al, 2005) and immunosensors (Golden et al, 2005;Ligler et al, 2007;Ligler et al, 2003). While these immunoassays have similar sensitivities to the mouse bioassay, and are much more rapid, they do not provide information about the activity state of the toxin.…”