Recent progress of the effect of environmental factors on Aspergillus flavus growth and aflatoxins production on foods

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Abstract

The contamination of Aspergillus flavus and subsequent aflatoxins (AFs) has been considered as one of the most serious food safety problems due to their acute and chronic adverse effects on humans and animals. This review collects the available information from recent years on the effect of the major environmental factors such as water activity (aw), temperature, CO2, and pH on the fungal growth, the expression of AFs-related genes, and AFs production by A. flavus on foods. In particular, the relationship between the relative expression of key regulatory (aflR and aflS) and structural genes (aflD, aflO, aflQ, etc.) and AFs production under different environmental conditions are collected and discussed. The information collected in this review can be used to design control strategies of A. flavus and AFs contamination in practical applications, primarily during storage and processing. These data suggest that integrating various post-harvest methods with synergistic functions may be more efficient for the control of A. flavus growth and AFs production, although the individual environmental factors alone have an impact.

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Human aflatoxicosis in developing countries: a review of toxicology, exposure, potential health consequences, and interventions.

Jonathan Williams, Timothy D. Phillips, Pauline Jolly … (2004)

Aflatoxins are well recognized as a cause of liver cancer, but they have additional important toxic effects. In farm and laboratory animals, chronic exposure to aflatoxins compromises immunity and interferes with protein metabolism and multiple micronutrients that are critical to health. These effects have not been widely studied in humans, but the available information indicates that at least some of the effects observed in animals also occur in humans. The prevalence and level of human exposure to aflatoxins on a global scale have been reviewed, and the resulting conclusion was that approximately 4.5 billion persons living in developing countries are chronically exposed to largely uncontrolled amounts of the toxin. A limited amount of information shows that, at least in those locations where it has been studied, the existing aflatoxin exposure results in changes in nutrition and immunity. The aflatoxin exposure and the toxic affects of aflatoxins on immunity and nutrition combine to negatively affect health factors (including HIV infection) that account for >40% of the burden of disease in developing countries where a short lifespan is prevalent. Food systems and economics render developed-country approaches to the management of aflatoxins impractical in developing-country settings, but the strategy of using food additives to protect farm animals from the toxin may also provide effective and economical new approaches to protecting human populations.

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Oxylipins as developmental and host-fungal communication signals.

Nancy Keller, Dimitrios I Tsitsigiannis (2007)

Pathogenic microbes and their hosts have acquired complex signalling mechanisms to appraise themselves of the environmental milieu in the ongoing battle for survival. Several recent studies have implicated oxylipins as a novel class of host-microbe signalling molecules. Oxylipins represent a vast and diverse family of secondary metabolites that originate from the oxidation or further conversion of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Among the microbial oxylipins, the fungal oxylipins are best characterized and function as hormone-like signals that modulate the timing and balance between asexual and sexual spore development in addition to toxin production. Coupled with other studies that implicate a role for fungal oxylipins in pathogenesis by Aspergillus and Candida spp., these results suggest that host and microbial oxylipins might interfere with the metabolism, perception or signalling processes of each other.

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Effect of climate change on Aspergillus flavus and aflatoxin B1 production

Ángel C. Medina, Alicia Rodriguez-Carrion, Naresh Magan (2014)

This review considers the available information on the potential impact of key environmental factors and their interactions on the molecular ecology, growth and aflatoxin production by Aspergillus flavus in vitro and in maize grain. The recent studies which have been carried out to examine the impact of water activity × temperature on aflatoxin biosynthesis and phenotypic aflatoxin production are examined. These have shown that there is a direct relationship between the relative expression of key regulatory and structural genes under different environmental conditions which correlate directly with aflatoxin B1 production. A model has been developed to integrate the relative expression of 10 biosynthetic genes in the pathway, growth and aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) production which was validated under elevated temperature and water stress conditions. The effect of interacting conditions of aw × temperature × elevated CO2 (2 × and 3 × existing levels) are detailed for the first time. This suggests that while such interacting environmental conditions have little effect on growth they do have a significant impact on aflatoxin biosynthetic gene expression (structural aflD and regulatory aflR genes) and can significantly stimulate the production of AFB1. While the individual factors alone have an impact, it is the combined effect of these three abiotic factors which have an impact on mycotoxin production. This approach provides data which is necessary to help predict the real impacts of climate change on mycotoxigenic fungi.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Fuguo Xing: (View ORCID Profile)

Journal

Title: Food Quality and Safety

Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)

ISSN (Print): 2399-1399

ISSN (Electronic): 2399-1402

Publication date Created: March 2020

Publication date Created: May 11 2020

Publication date Created: February 28 2020

Publication date Other: March 2020

Publication date (Print): May 11 2020

Publication date (Electronic): February 28 2020

Volume: 4

Issue: 1

Pages: 21-28

Affiliations

[1 ]Key Laboratory of Agro-Products Quality and Safety Control in Storage and Transport Process, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs/Institute of Food Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

[2 ]College of Science, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, P. R. China

Article

DOI: 10.1093/fqsafe/fyz040

SO-VID: 5f88bec4-bb00-4e1f-91d1-1eaa482f28a0

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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Recent progress of the effect of environmental factors on Aspergillus flavus growth and aflatoxins production on foods

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Environmental, Social, and Governance

Most cited references 61

Human aflatoxicosis in developing countries: a review of toxicology, exposure, potential health consequences, and interventions.

Oxylipins as developmental and host-fungal communication signals.

Effect of climate change on Aspergillus flavus and aflatoxin B1 production

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Cited by 10

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