Journal of Food Safety and Quality

Foodborne pathogens contamination is a major global challenge in the field of food safety. Traditional detection methods are limited by issues such as time-consuming processes and complex operational requirements. In recent years, bacteriophage-based biosensors have emerged as a promising research focus for the detection of foodborne pathogens due to their high specificity, sensitivity, and rapid detection capabilities. Bacteriophages, acting as biological recognition elements, can specifically bind to target bacteria and achieve rapid detection through signal transduction methods such as optical, electrochemical and magnetic signals. This review systematically summarized the research progress in bacteriophage-based biosensors for foodborne pathogenic bacteria detection, with a particular focus on the design principles, technical advantages and application prospects of optical biosensors, electrochemical biosensors, magnetic biosensors, and multimodal/multifunctional integrated sensors. These sensors show great potential for applications in food safety, environmental monitoring and clinical diagnostics. In the future, as bacteriophage resources become more abundant and with the advancement and integration of bioinformatics and artificial intelligence technologies, bacteriophage-based biosensors are expected to enable the development of more efficient detection tools and large-scale applications. These advancements will provide robust technical support for food safety, environmental monitoring and clinical diagnostics, holding significant research and societal value.

foodborne pathogens; bacteriophage; biosensors; rapid detection; food safety