Abstract
Cylindrospermopsin (CYN) is a cyanotoxin that is of particular concern for its potential toxicity to human and animal health and ecological consequences due to contamination of drinking water. The increasing emergence of CYN around the world has led to urgent development of rapid and high-throughput methods for its detection in water. In this study, a highly sensitive monoclonal antibody N8 was produced and characterized for CYN detection through the development of a direct competitive time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (TRFIA). The newly developed TRFIA exhibited a typical sigmoidal response for CYN at concentrations of 0.01⁻100 ng mL(−1), with a wide quantitative range between 0.1 and 50 ng mL(−1). The detection limit of the method was calculated to be 0.02 ng mL(−1), which is well below the guideline value of 1 μg L(−1) and is sensitive enough to provide an early warning of the occurrence of CYN-producing cyanobacterial blooms. The newly developed TRFIA also displayed good precision and accuracy, as evidenced by low coefficients of variation (4.1⁻6.5%). Recoveries ranging from 92.6% to 108.8% were observed upon the analysis of CYN-spiked water samples. Moreover, comparison of the TRIFA with an ELISA kit through testing 76 water samples and 15 Cylindrospermopsis cultures yielded a correlation r² value of 0.963, implying that the novel immunoassay was reliable for the detection of CYN in water and algal samples.