Perveen Akhtar

The development of aquafeeds that enhance immunity in fish represents an effective strategy for disease management in aquaculture. This approach involves incorporating functional ingredients with immunostimulatory properties to improve fish welfare. The use of dietary immunostimulants is considered a suitable, safe, and eco‐friendly alternative to mitigate the adverse effects of antibiotics and chemotherapeutics. Hence, there is growing interest among aquaculture stakeholders in immunostimulant sources such as algae, plant derivatives, trace minerals, prebiotics, and probiotics. However, earlier studies have relied on biochemical markers to evaluate the interactions of dietary immunostimulants with the fish immune system, which provide limited mechanistic insights and reduce reproducibility for large‐scale applications. Recent advances in molecular approaches, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and small RNA profiling, have been increasingly applied to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of dietary immunostimulants and to guide the development of species‐specific formulations. By integrating these molecular tools, researchers can design sustainable, species‐tailored immunostimulant diets that reduce the reliance on antibiotics. This review synthesizes molecular evidence on nutrient‐, plant‐, microbial‐, and algae‐based immunostimulants, highlighting how omics tools elucidate their mechanisms and support the design of species‐specific functional feeds.

Mycotoxins are responsible for a multitude of diseases in both humans and animals, resulting in significant medical and economic burdens worldwide. Conventional detection methods, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), are highly effective, but they are generally confined to laboratory settings. Consequently, there is a growing demand for point-of-care testing (POCT) solutions that are rapid, sensitive, portable, and cost-effective. Lateral flow assays (LFAs) are a pivotal technology in POCT due to their simplicity, rapidity, and ease of use. This review synthesizes data from 78 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2024, evaluating advances in nanoparticle-based LFAs for detection of singular or multiplex mycotoxin types. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) remain the most widely used, due to their favorable optical and surface chemistry; however, significant progress has also been made with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), magnetic nanoparticles, quantum dots (QDs), nanozymes, and hybrid nanostructures. The integration of multifunctional nanomaterials has enhanced assay sensitivity, specificity, and operational usability, with innovations including smartphone-based readers, signal amplification strategies, and supplementary technologies such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). While most singular LFAs achieved moderate sensitivity (0.001–1 ng/mL), only 6% reached ultra-sensitive detection ( 0.05), confirming the matrix-independence of these optimized platforms. While analytical challenges remain for complex targets like fumonisins and deoxynivalenol (DON), ongoing innovations in signal amplification, biorecognition chemistry, and assay standardization are driving LFAs toward becoming reliable, ultra-sensitive, and field-deployable platforms for high-throughput mycotoxin screening in global food safety surveillance.