"In the past decade, development of biomimetic ligands have enabled rapid advances as alternative candidates to antibodies in many biotechnology fields. The Research will focus on the development of a new generation of biomimetic sensors for food safety and quality monitoring. The approach of the project will be oriented to test the performances of enzymes or antibodies versus new computationally-designed biomimetic ligands which work by mimicking the biological binding site. In particular it will be tested the performances of new computationally-designed biomimetic ligands which work as mimicking the biological binding site, overcoming the disadvantages of biological materials (unstable, expensive to produce) and matching the continuous trend to reduce the use of animals for the production of biological reagents. Choosing a ligand to achieve some desired structure is still largely a subject of trial and error. The key point of this research will be taking advantage of molecular modelling to obtain candidates with the aim of reducing to orders of magnitude the efforts to obtain specific receptors. These new ligands will be coupled with different transducers used in sensors technology known to give fast, reproducible and sensible analytical responses often in real time. This approach is promising to produce inexpensive biotechnological devices to be used in food safety and quality monitoring by combining the selectivity of biomimetic ligands with abiotic properties such as greater stability in harsh environments, with the powerful properties of biosensing techniques. All important analytical parameters i.e. reproducibility, sensitivity, selectivity, stability, etc, will be studied. first using standards and, after optimization of the protocol, on real samples. As model, typical food target will be used such as xenobiotics."