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A highly sensitive immunochromatographic assay for lead ions in drinking water based on antibody-oriented probe and silver enhancement

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Abstract

Lead ions are a toxic metal that can enter the human body through the diet and negatively impact human health. A wide variety of foods, such as vegetables, meat, aquatic product, and drinking water, can be contaminated with lead ions. In this study, a highly sensitive immunochromatographic assay (ICA) based on antibody-oriented probe and silver enhancement was established for the qualitative and quantitative determination of lead ions in drinking water. The recombinant protein A (PrA) was used in probe preparation to improve antibody bioactivity while silver enhancement method was applied to enhance the signal reporter of ICA. It was determined that the visual limit of detection and the scanning limit of quantification of the ICA based on antibody-oriented probe and silver enhancement for lead ions in drinking water were 0.2 ng/mL and 0.08 ng/mL, respectively. The results obtained from developed ICA strip and ICP-MS had no obvious difference using statistical analysis of t test. Compared to previously reported ICA methods for lead ions, the developed ICA method enabled analyzing lead ions in drinking water with a superior sensitivity and detection range.

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The authors confrm that the data supporting the fndings of this study are available within the article.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32102072) and the Fundamental Research Project of Wuhan Knowledge Innovation Program (No. 2022020801020399).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Food Science and Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Xuefunan Road 68, Wuhan, 430023, China

    Yangyang Li & Wenli Qu

  2. Hubei Provincial Institute for Food Supervision and Test, Wuhan, 430075, China

    Zhengwei Zhu

  3. Key Laboratory for Deep Processing of Major Grain and Oil, Ministry of Education, Wuhan, 430023, China

    Qing Yang, Yan Liu, Qiao Wang, Shuo Duan, Jine Wu, Zhiyong Gong & Lin Xu

  4. Hubei Key Laboratory for Processing and Transformation of Agricultural Products, Wuhan, 430023, China

    Qing Yang, Yan Liu, Qiao Wang, Shuo Duan, Jine Wu, Zhiyong Gong & Lin Xu

  5. Food Safety Research Center, Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of Hubei Province, Wuhan, 430023, China

    Yan Liu

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  1. Yangyang Li
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  4. Qing Yang
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Contributions

YL: writing—original draft, validation, data curation, methodology. ZZ: conceptualization, methodology. WQ: data curation. QY: writing—review and editing. YL: writing—review and editing. QW: validation. SD: validation. JW: writing—review and editing. ZG: writing—review and editing. LX: resources, conceptualization, methodology. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lin Xu.

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Li, Y., Zhu, Z., Qu, W. et al. A highly sensitive immunochromatographic assay for lead ions in drinking water based on antibody-oriented probe and silver enhancement. Eur Food Res Technol 249, 3097–3103 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-023-04351-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-023-04351-5

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