Studies on detection of atrazine and papaverine by protein arrays

The high toxicity of pesticides and their wide use in modern agriculture has increased public concern. People are also worried about health threats caused by deleterious materials added to food. Current detection methods for these materials have their shortcomings. Microarray technology provides a highly sensitive and precise technique for obtaining information from biological samples, with the added advantage that it can handle a large number of samples simultaneously for rapid analysis. A direct competitive immunoassay for the screening of poisonous chemical haptens is proposed. Complete antigens of atrazine and papaverine were labeled with fluorescence. The fluorescence intensity linearly increased with decreasing concentration of analytes. The detection limits of atrazine and papaverine were 0.001 μg/ml and 0.01 μg/ml respectively.