Pesticide immunoassay

Key words Microcantilever, Nanomechanical biosensors, MEMs, Immunoassay, Pesticide detection,... 

See also-. Food and Nutritional Analysis Contaminants Meat and Meat Products Dairy Products. Hormones Steroids. Immunoassays, Techniques Radioimmunoassays Enzyme Immunoassays. Pesticides. Polymerase Chain Reaction. Toxins Mycotoxins Neurotoxins. 

P. A. Cunniff, ed.. Official Methods of Analysis of AO AC International, 16th ed., Vols. I and II, AO AC International, Arlington, Va., 1995. Vol. I includes Pesticide Formulations and Pesticide Residues. Over 2100 coUabotatively tested, approved methods for chemical and microbiological analyses, with 149 new methods, 103 revised/updated methods, methods using anibody-based test kits, enzyme immunoassay, and annual supplements containing new and revised methods chemical and common names of all dmgs and pesticides easy-to-locate references. 

Biopolymers are employed in many immunological techniques, including the analysis of food, clinical samples, pesticides, and in other areas of analytical chemistry. Immunoassays (qv) are specific, sensitive, relatively easy to perform, and usually inexpensive. For repetitive analyses, immunoassays compare very favorably with many conventional methods in terms of both sensitivity and limits of detection. 

Table 4. Detection Limits of Immunoassays Developed for Mycotoxins and Pesticides...

Example 6-2 The following standard addition plot was obtained for a competitive electrochemical enzyme immunoassay of the pesticide 2,4-D. A ground water sample (diluted 1 20 was subsequently assayed by the same protocol to yield a current signal of 65 nA. Calculate the concentration of 2,4-D in the original sample. 

The first application of immunologically based technology to pesticides was not reported until 1970, when Centeno and Johnson developed antibodies that selectively bound malathion. A few years later, radioimmunoassays were developed for aldrin and dieldrin and for parathion. In 1972, Engvall and Perlman introduced the use of enzymes as labels for immunoassay and launched the term enzyme-linked... 

Sample preparation techniques vary depending on the analyte and the matrix. An advantage of immunoassays is that less sample preparation is often needed prior to analysis. Because the ELISA is conducted in an aqueous system, aqueous samples such as groundwater may be analyzed directly in the immunoassay or following dilution in a buffer solution. For soil, plant material or complex water samples (e.g., sewage effluent), the analyte must be extracted from the matrix. The extraction method must meet performance criteria such as recovery, reproducibility and ruggedness, and ultimately the analyte must be in a solution that is aqueous or in a water-miscible solvent. For chemical analytes such as pesticides, a simple extraction with methanol may be suitable. At the other extreme, multiple extractions, column cleanup and finally solvent exchange may be necessary to extract the analyte into a solution that is free of matrix interference. 

The development of sensitive and inexpensive immunoassays for low molecular weight pesticides has been an important trend in environmental and analytical sciences during the past two decades. 0.27-29 jq design an immunoassay for a pesticide, one can rely on the immunoassay literature for agrochemicals, " but many of the innovations in clinical immunoanalysis are also directly applicable to environmental analysis. - Conversely, the exquisite sensitivity required and difficult matrices present for many environmental immunoassay applications have forced the development of technologies that are also useful in clinical immunoassay applications. In the following discussion we will describe widely accepted procedures for the development of pesticide immunoassays. 

For pesticide residue immunoassays, matrices may include surface or groundwater, soil, sediment and plant or animal tissue or fluids. Aqueous samples may not require preparation prior to analysis, other than concentration. For other matrices, extractions or other cleanup steps are needed and these steps require the integration of the extracting solvent with the immunoassay. When solvent extraction is required, solvent effects on the assay are determined during assay optimization. Another option is to extract in the desired solvent, then conduct a solvent exchange into a more miscible solvent. Immunoassays perform best with water-miscible solvents when solvent concentrations are below 20%. Our experience has been that nearly every matrix requires a complete validation. Various soil types and even urine samples from different animals within a species may cause enough variation that validation in only a few samples is not sufficient. 

Pesticide immunoassays have been developed for a variety of pesticides and, more recently, GMOs, and have been used for matrices such as surface water, groundwater, runoff water, soil, sediment, crops, milk, meat, eggs, grain, urine and blood. ° Table 9 is a partial list of immunoassays for chemical pesticides developed since 1995 and includes notations on the matrices studied. A fairly comprehensive list of pesticide immunoassays developed prior to 1994 was provided by Gee et al2 ... 

Technology providers use quantitative immunoassays to determine expression data of field material for regulatory submissions. Regulatory authorities require that expression levels of introduced proteins in various plant parts be determined by quantitative, validated methods. Immunoassays are also used to generate product characterization data, to assess food, feed and environmental characteristics, to calculate concentrations for toxicology studies and to obtain tolerance exemption or establish tolerances for pesticidal proteins. 

In the following discussion, the detection of pesticides and veterinary dmgs in food animals by immunoassay will be described. Discussion will be organized by compound class, the specific analyte, and, finally, the tissues examined. The general principles described in the first part of this review provide the rationale in the applications described in the following pages. 

Pesticides, including insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, are widely used in agriculture, and the potential for these residues to accumulate in food has led to concern for human safety. Pesticide residues may enter food animals from environmental sources or from treated or contaminated feeds. Immunoassay development for pesticides has had major impacts for pesticide registrations, analysis of residues in foods, monitoring environmental contamination, determination of occupational exposure, and integration of pest management. 

Table 4 Examples of immunoassays developed for pesticides and their metabolites...

The use of immunoassays for the determination of pesticides and veterinary medicines in food animals has increased since the early 1990s. The advantages of simple analysis, quick results, and high throughput make immunoassays a powerful technique for problematic matrices commonly encountered in animal agriculture. Careful development and validation are required to obtain accurate results, however. This review has demonstrated that most immunochemical techniques have been designed for use with milk samples, but a number of applications have also been developed for liver and muscle samples. The development of immunoassay techniques for residue analysis in eggs has clearly not been pursued to the extent of other edible tissues. 

---