Aflatoxin contaminates foods including peanuts. Aflatoxin is a carcinogenic toxin mainly produced bty Aspergillus flavus. Other Aspergillus species that rarely produce aflatoxins are A. nomius and A. niger. Aflatoxin is associated with liver failure, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and death. Recent studies have shown that peanuts in Kenya are highly contaminated with aflatoxins but information ...

Stonebrood is a disease of honey bee larvae caused by fungi from the genus Aspergillus. As very few studies have focused on the epidemiological aspects of stonebrood and diseased brood may be rapidly discarded by worker bees, it is possible that a high number of cases go undetected. Aspergillus spp. fungi are ubiquitous and associated with disease in many insects, plants, animals and man. They ...

The occurrence of moulds and aflatoxins in groundnut kernels are of great concern to food processors and consumers because of their ability to cause spoilage resulting to economic losses and public health problem such as aflatoxicosis. This study was aimed at determining the presence of Aspergillus species and aflatoxin levels in fresh harvested and stored groundnuts kernels from non-mechanized...

The Aspergillus Genome Database (AspGD; http://www.aspgd.org) is a freely available web-based resource that was designed for Aspergillus researchers and is also a valuable source of information for the entire fungal research community. In addition to being a repository and central point of access to genome, transcriptome and polymorphism data, AspGD hosts a comprehensive comparative genomics to...

Susceptibility testing of 27 Aspergillus reference strains belonging to five species was performed using the microdilution broth method with yeast nitrogen broth and RPMI-1640. Similar results were found using the two media. The strains of Aspergillus fumigatus (n = 8) and Aspergillus niger (n = 4) had MICs of amphotericin B in the range 0.125-0.5 mg/L. In contrast, nine out of 13 strains of As...

Polyketide synthases (PKSs) of Aspergillus species are multidomain and multifunctional megaenzymes that play an important role in the synthesis of diverse polyketide compounds. Putative PKS protein sequences from Aspergillus species representing medically, agriculturally, and industrially important Aspergillus species were chosen and screened for in silico studies. Six candidate Aspergillus spe...

Aspergillus section Nigri includes some of the most important species for biotechnology and its species are of widespread occurrence. During our surveys of various food products and tropical soil we isolated several aspergilli belonging to section Nigri. In this paper, four new sclerotium and/or ochratoxin A producing species belonging to this section are proposed. In addition, based on a polyp...

The Aspergillus Genome Database (AspGD; http://www.aspgd.org) is a freely available, web-based resource for researchers studying fungi of the genus Aspergillus, which includes organisms of clinical, agricultural and industrial importance. AspGD curators have now completed comprehensive review of the entire published literature about Aspergillus nidulans and Aspergillus fumigatus, and this annot...

Invasive aspergillosis is a leading cause of infectious death in immunosuppressed patients. Here, we adapted a phage display library-based selection to screen and identify binding peptides to the surface of Aspergillus fumigatus conidia and hyphae. We identified a peptide (sequence CGGRLGPFC) that reliably binds to the surface of Aspergillus fumigatus hyphae. Binding was not Aspergillus strain ...