The filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans primarily reproduces by forming asexual spores called conidia and produces the mycotoxin sterigmatocystin (ST), the penultimate precursor of aflatoxins. It has been known that asexual development and ST production are tightly co-regulated by various regulatory inputs. Here, we report that the novel regulator AslA with a C2H2 domain oppositely regulate...

An aspect of mycotoxin biosynthesis that remains unclear is its relationship with the cellular management of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Here we conduct a comparative study of the total ROS production in the wild-type strain (SU-1) of the plant pathogen and aflatoxin producer, Aspergillus parasiticus, and its mutant strain, AFS10, in which the aflatoxin biosynthesis pathway is blocked by dis...

In the present study the mould incidence, ergosterol and aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) contaminations were evaluated in different food based seed samples viz., chickpea, cowpea, green gram, groundnut, Indian bean, maize, sorghum, soya bean and sunflower collected from different agro-climatic regions of Karnataka (India). The agar plate and standard blotter methods were employed for determination of the f...

External pH constitutes one of the most important environmental factors that control growth, metabolism and differentiation in microorganisms, including fungi. We have analyzed the effect of external pH on sterigmatocystin biosynthesis in Aspergillus nidulans. It was observed in repeated experiments that alkaline pH, in opposition to acid pH, increased sterigmatocystin production and the transc...

In the filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans, a heterotrimeric G protein alpha-subunit and an RGS domain protein, encoded by fadA and flbA, respectively, regulate production of the carcinogenic metabolite sterigmatocystin (ST) and asexual spores (i.e., conidia). We investigated the genetic involvement of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (PkaA), a potential downstream target...

Aflatoxins are carcinogenic metabolites produced by several strains of Aspergillus flavus group in food and feed. Cluster genes in aflatoxin biosynthesis pathway contain structural, regular and unassigned genes , nor-1 , ver-1 , and omt-1 are structural genes that coding for key enzymes and aflR is a regulatory gene that plays a key role in the production of aflatoxin and is affecting on the s...

Objective: Aflatoxin is known as one of the most important mycotoxins that threatens of human life. The toxin is produced by Aspergillus species which are common cause of contamination of agricultural products. For this reason, the use of organic compounds has always been considered in order to inhibit the growth of fungi and production of toxin. The aim of this study was to investigate the eff...

The health risks associated with ingesting food contaminated mycotoxins, particularly aflatoxin-contaminated staple foods like maize and other cereals, have been widely studied. However, there is little knowledge about the role of inhalation pathogenic fungi as bioaerosols in air from handling crops an occupational risk. This paper presents a study aimed at determining level airborne aflatoxin-...