Sensors 2015, 15, 25831-25867; doi:10.3390/s151025831 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors Review Fluorescence-Based Bioassays for the Detection and Evaluation of Food Materials Kentaro Nishi 1, Shin-Ichiro Isobe 1, Yun Zhu 2,3 and Ryoiti Kiyama 2,* 1 Department of Applied Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu Sangyo University, 2-3-1 Matsukadai, Kasi-i, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 813-8503, Japan; E-Mails:
[email protected] (K.N.);
[email protected] (S.I.) 2 Biomedical Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8566, Japan; E-Mail:
[email protected] 3 Scinet Company, 4-21-12 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0074, Japan * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +81-29-861-6189; Fax: +81-29-861-6190. Academic Editor: Arun Bhunia Received: 24 July 2015 / Accepted: 30 September 2015 / Published: 13 October 2015 Abstract: We summarize here the recent progress in fluorescence-based bioassays for the detection and evaluation of food materials by focusing on fluorescent dyes used in bioassays and applications of these assays for food safety, quality and efficacy. Fluorescent dyes have been used in various bioassays, such as biosensing, cell assay, energy transfer-based assay, probing, protein/immunological assay and microarray/biochip assay. Among the arrays used in microarray/biochip assay, fluorescence-based microarrays/biochips, such as antibody/protein microarrays, bead/suspension arrays, capillary/sensor arrays, DNA microarrays/polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based arrays, glycan/lectin arrays, immunoassay/enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based arrays, microfluidic chips and tissue arrays, have been developed and used for the assessment of allergy/poisoning/toxicity, contamination and efficacy/mechanism, and quality control/safety.