Relevant Aspects in the Development of Electrochemical Aptasensors for the Determination of Antibiotics—A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Since this is a review paper, Most of the important aspects of the Aptamer based Sensors are covered. But I would personally like to have more of this information in a Review paper on aptamer-based detection

1. In Section 3: Some information on how Nanoparticles improve the electrochemical properties is discussed. However, the literature has so many different nanomaterials to improve the performance.  A comprehensive analysis of improvement achieved based on the nanomaterial used will be useful.

2. Any details on Aptamer Stability for antibiotics detection in real/biological samples will be great if added to this review

3. Cross-reactivity of Aptamers is generally a big problem mostly addressed with the SELEX process. But any more cross-reactivity information on antibiotic sensing will be welcome

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some corrections in English are needed. 

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewers for the careful reading of the manuscript and comments, which have contributed to improving the quality of the work. All suggestions have been taken into account.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a nicely written manuscript from Daniela Nunes da Silva et al. that presents and summarizes different studies in the development of electrochemical aptasensors and their applications in the determination of antibiotics, seeking to foster innovation in electrochemical biosensors. I think this manuscript could be appealing enough to readers of “Electrochem” and be published by “Electrochem” with minor revisions.

 

1.      The authors should add more comments on the structure-switching electrochemical aptasensors (Figure 4).

 

2.      For dual-target electrochemical aptasensors, is the standard curve more difficult to obtain? If the responses from multiple antibiotics could overlap with each other.

 

3.      There is a typo in Line 216. “the detection of kanamycin (KAN) and streptomycin ( STR). Modified sequences were”

 

4.      There is a typo in the sixth column header of Table 1. Limito f Detection (LOD) -> Limit of Detection (LOD).

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewers for the careful reading of the manuscript and comments, which have contributed to improving the quality of the work. All suggestions have been taken into account.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this manuscript, the authors reviews the applications of aptamers as electrochemical sensors in detecting antibiotics in farm products. The authors also provide suggestions to improve the performance of the aptasensors including the use of nanomaterials and probe sequence design, which could be a useful guideline for researchers new to this field. However, the following comments needs to be addressed before final publication.

1. The authors can further discuss different eletrochemical techniques in aptasensors application. What is the advantage/disadvantage of voltammetric, potentiometric, conductometric, pulse voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy when they are used for detecting aptamer-target binding? How does that impact the design of aptamer and electrode surface?

2. In Page 4, line 113, the authors can elaborate Bai et al’s work. What electrochemical measurement was used in this study? Why can aptamer-target binding increase the signal and the response was linear? This would be helpful for readers who is not familiar with this.

3. In section 3 where relevant aspects in the development of electrochemical aptasensors were discussed, I encourage the authors to add more review about how to improve the specificity of the aptasensors. For example, how can we eliminate the off-target binding of aptamers since the electrochemical signal is very sensitive to their conformational change? What is strategy of choosing the correct electrochemical mediator/indicator to make sure the signal is target specific?

4. The authors may consider spending more time working on the figures of this manuscript. For example, figure 3 seems unclear in illustrating how aptamers are related to those different types of electrochemical measurement. Figure 5 is also in low quality compared to the one in the original paper the authors adapted from.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall the quality of English is good and I do not find any major issues. 

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewers for the careful reading of the manuscript and comments, which have contributed to improving the quality of the work. All suggestions have been taken into account.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have addressed my comments with the revised manuscript. I think the manuscript is good to be published in Electrochem.