The application of loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) in food testing for bacterial pathogens and fungal contaminants

Bacterial pathogens and toxicants, parasites as well as mycotoxin producing fungi are the major biotic factors influencing the safety of food. Moreover, viral infections and prions may be present as quasi biotic challenging factors. A vast array of culture dependent analytical methods and protocols for food safety testing has been developed during the past decades. Presently, protocols involving molecular biological techniques such as PCR-based nucleic acid amplification and hybridization have become available for many of the known pathogens with their major advantages being rapidness, high sensitivity and specificity. However, this type of assays is still quite labor- and cost intensive and mostly cannot be operated directly in the field. Recently, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) of DNA has emerged as an alternative to the use of PCR-based methods not only in food safety testing but also in a wide array of application. Its advantages over PCR-based techniques are even shorter reaction time, no need for specific equipment, high sensitivity and specificity as well as comparably low susceptibility to inhibitors present in sample materials which enables detection of the pathogens in sample materials even without time consuming sample preparation. The present article presents a critical review of the application of LAMP-based methods and their usefulness in detecting and identifying food borne bacterial pathogens and toxicants as well as mycotoxin producing food borne fungi as compared to other methods. Moreover does it elaborate on new developments in the design and automation of LAMP-based assays and their implications for the future developments of food testing.