Recent advances in biomimetic taste-based biosensors and their applications

The biological taste sensing system has a sensitive perception ability for taste substances (tastants) and is considered as one of the most efficient chemical sensing systems in nature. With the rapid development of human society, biomimetic taste-based biosensors have become increasingly important to improve human life quality and ensure human health, and have been widely applied in many fields such as food safety, biomedicine, and public health. In recent years, researchers have been devoted to developing a new type of chemical sensing system. Among them, biomimetic olfactory-based biosensors have shown promising prospects and potential applications compared to traditional chemical sensors due to the utilization of well-developed natural molecular recognition mechanisms. Biomimetic taste-based biosensors usually employ biologically originated taste cells, taste receptors, taste buds, taste organoids and lipid membranes as sensitive elements, combined with secondary transducers to achieve specific and sensitive detection of tastants in order to obtain comparable detection performance to that of the biological taste system. This review summarizes the most recent advances in biomimetic taste-based biosensors based on biological taste sensing elements. First, the basic principle of biomimetic taste-based biosensors is briefly introduced. Then, the system composition and development of biomimetic taste-based biosensors are outlined and discussed in detail, with a focus on the preparation technology of sensitive elements and their coupling with transducers. In addition, the performance of biomimetic taste-based biosensors and their applications in food quality testing and basic and clinical research are summarized. Finally, the current challenges and development trends of biomimetic taste-based biosensors are proposed and discussed.