Produced by certain fungi, mycotoxins are secondary metabolites that contaminate various food commodities. Many naturally occurring mycotoxins are mutagenic and carcinogenic, which pose severe adverse health effects to human beings and livestock. Mycotoxins affect 25% of the global food crops each year, resulting in the loss of 1 billion metric tons of food products annually. Estimated economic damage to the U.S. and Canada due to mycotoxins is as high as $5 billion per year. While current mycotoxin detection methods have been proven effective, there are still drawbacks such as high cost and complex sample preparation. To address this issue, we designed and synthesized a novel luminescent metal-organic framework material (LMOF-241) that is capable of ultra-sensitive optical detection of mycotoxins, especially Aflatoxin B<sub>1</sub>, one of the most potent known natural carcinogens. LMOF-241 can rapidly detect Aflatoxin B<sub>1</sub> at parts per billion level which makes it one of the best performing optical chemical sensors to date. To provide insight into the superb selectivity and sensitivity of LMOF-241, we also studied the electronic properties of this LMOF material and selected mycotoxins as well as the extent of mycotoxin-LMOF interactions using computational methods. This study demonstrates that LMOFs are suitable potential candidates as efficient and cost-effective optical sensors for the detection of biochemical hazards.

Ultra-sensitive detection of mycotoxins by a luminescent metal-organic framework

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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