Boron nitride nanoplate-based strand exchange amplification with enhanced sensitivity and rapidity for quantitative detection of Staphylococcus aureus in food samples

Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most common foodborne pathogens that can cause serious food poisoning and infectious diseases in humans. Standard identification approaches include nucleic acid amplification, but current amplification tools suffer from low amplification efficiency, resulting in the risk of low sensitivity and long detection time. Herein, boron nitride nanoplates (BNNPs) were chosen as an additive for enhancing the sensitivity and rapidity of strand exchange amplification (SEA), thereby successfully expanding the application of nucleic acid detection for detecting Staphylococcus aureus in food samples. As a result, SEA based on boron nitride nanoplates (BNNP-SEA) was employed for sensitive and rapid detection of foodborne pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. Compared with classical SEA, the BNNP-based SEA assay was more than 10-fold sensitive, and the detection time was reduced by 15 minutes. The optimized BNNP-based SEA shows a wide linear range from 40 pg to 50 ng in a diluted solution of the target DNA with a low detection limit of 40 pg. Moreover, the BNNP-based SEA achieves the quantitative detection of Staphylococcus aureus in different food samples (pork, beef, mutton, duck, milk and shrimp). In contrast to the classical SEA, the BNNP-based SEA method enabled sensitive and rapid detection of Staphylococcus aureus in the above food samples at concentrations as low as 5 × 10³ CFU mL⁻¹. The BNNP-based SEA assay is specific, sensitive and reliable, offering a valuable diagnostic technology for routine analysis in food safety research.