Aflatoxins: Biosynthesis, Occurrence, Toxicity, and Remedies

Abstract

Food contagion with aflatoxins is the modern concern and has received a great awareness during the last few decades. The intermittent incidence of these toxins in agricultural commodities has negative role on the economy of the affected regions where harvest and postharvest techniques for the prevention of mold growth, are seldom practiced. Aflatoxins are difuranocoumarin derivatives produced by a polyketide pathway by the fungus Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus via polyketide pathway which are highly hepatotoxic, hepatocarcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic in nature and contaminate a wide variety of important agricultural commodities before, during, and after harvest in various environmental conditions. The production of aflatoxins in innate substrates depends upon the various factors, that is, type of substrate, fungal species, moisture contents of the substrate, minerals, humidity, temperature, and physical damage of the kernels. These toxins cause several ailments such as cancer, hepatitis, mutation abnormalities, and reproduction disorders. Minimization and inactivation of aflatoxins contaminants through proper crop management at farm level and with physical, chemical, and biological techniques are the limelight of the article.

Addition of Carbon to the Culture Medium Improves the Detection Efficiency of Aflatoxin Synthetic Fungi

“…AF is synthesized by particular Aspergillus species, including A. flavus , A. parasiticus , A. nomius , and A. bombysis . Genetic investigations of the AF synthetic mechanism have shown AF synthetic fungi contain a specific gene cluster [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. However, many non-toxigenic strains also have this gene cluster, although these clusters may have partial deletions and/or substitutions compared to those in AF synthetic fungi.…”

Interference with mutagenic aflatoxin B1-induced checkpoints through antagonistic action of ochratoxin A in intestinal cancer cells: a molecular explanation on potential risk of crosstalk between carcinogens

“…Several food-contaminating mycotoxins including aflatoxins and ochratoxins have been identified by the International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC) as harmful carcinogens that potently promote tumor development in several organs including the liver and kidney of mammals [1, 2]. Among the carcinogenic mycotoxins, aflatoxin B1 (AFB 1 ) has been regarded as a representative orally ingested carcinogen in humans, and is thus classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the IARC [3, 4].…”

Structural and Biochemical Analysis of Protein–Protein Interactions Between the Acyl‐Carrier Protein and Product Template Domain

“…Examples include the hepatocellular carcinogen aflatoxin B1 and the chemotherapeutic bikaverin [1] . These compounds are synthesized by highly regulated, large iterative multifunctional enzymes known as the type I non-reducing polyketide synthases (NR-PKSs) [2] .…”

“…The current mix-and-match effort of PKS domains often results in a complete loss of activity, and past studies had shown that ACP incompatibility is key to such failure in combinatorial biosynthesis [1b, 15] . This work shows how we can engineer ACP to increase the compatibility of ACP and increase enzyme activity (Figure 5B), which is correlated with the crosslinking efficiency (Figure 4) and also consistent with the protein docking model (Fig.…”