Antibiotic-free broiler meat production is becoming increasingly popular worldwide due to consumer perception that it is superior to conventional broiler meat. Globally, broiler farming impacts the income generation of low-income households, helping to alleviate poverty and secure food in the countryside and in semi-municipal societies. For decades, antibiotics have been utilized in the poultry industry to prevent and treat diseases and promote growth. This practice contributes to the development of drug-resistant bacteria in livestock, including poultry, and humans through the food chain, posing a global public health threat. Additionally, consumer demand for antibiotic-free broiler meat is increasing. However, there are many challenges that need to be overcome by adopting suitable strategies to produce antibiotic-free broiler meat with regards to food safety and chicken welfare issues. Herein, we focus on the importance and current scenario of antibiotic use, prospects, and challenges in the production of sustainable antibiotic-free broiler meat, emphasizing broiler farming in the context of Bangladesh. Moreover, we also discuss the need for and challenges of antibiotic alternatives and provide a future outlook for antibiotic-free broiler meat production.

A nonenzymatic, amplification-free, and sensitive method for microRNA detection is reported using Au@NPFe₂O₃NC nanocubes.

We report a new method for the detection of regional DNA methylation using base-dependent affinity interaction (i.e., adsorption) of DNA with graphene. Due to the strongest adsorption affinity of guanine bases towards graphene, bisulfite-treated guanine-enriched methylated DNA leads to a larger amount of the adsorbed DNA on the graphene-modified electrodes in comparison to the adenine-enriched unmethylated DNA. The level of the methylation is quantified by monitoring the differential pulse voltammetric current as a function of the adsorbed DNA. The assay is sensitive to distinguish methylated and unmethylated DNA sequences at single CpG resolution by differentiating changes in DNA methylation as low as 5%. Furthermore, this method has been used to detect methylation levels in a collection of DNA samples taken from oesophageal cancer tissues.

Despite having reliable and excellent diagnostic performances, the currently available messenger RNA (mRNA) detection methods mostly use enzymatic amplification steps of the target mRNA which is generally affected by the sample manipulations, amplification bias and longer assay time. This paper reports an amplification-free electrochemical approach for the sensitive and selective detection of mRNA using a screen-printed gold electrode (SPE-Au). The target mRNA is selectively isolated by magnetic separation and adsorbed directly onto an unmodified SPE-Au. The surface-attached mRNA is then measured by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) in the presence of [Fe(CN)6]4-/3- redox system. This method circumvents the PCR amplification steps as well as simplifies the assay construction by avoiding multiple steps involved in conventional biosensing approaches of using recognition and transduction layers. Our method has demonstrated good sensitivity (LOD = 1.0pM) and reproducibility (% RSD = <5%, for n = 3) for detecting FAM134B mRNA in two cancer cell lines and a small cohort of clinical samples (number of samples = 26) collected from patients with oesophageal cancer. The analytical performance of our method is validated with a standard qRT-PCR analysis. We believe that our PCR-free approach holds a great promise for the analysis of tumor-specific mRNA in clinical samples.