Committee on Natural Toxins: Mycotoxins: Phycotoxins: Plant Toxins

Committee on Natural Toxins and Food Allergens.

Toxins, Mycotoxins, Endotoxins, Fusariotoxin

Fungi are ubiquitous to the environment and primarily saprophytic, using nonliving organic material as a nutrient source for growth and reproduction. Many of these saprophytes can colonize organic waterdamaged building materials. During the digestion process fungi secrete enzymes into the nutrient source to break down complex compounds into simpler compounds, which are taken up by the fungi and...

Natural Toxins in Plant Foodstuffs

Since food plants are mixtures of large numbers of chemical compounds and since any substance is toxic in a high enough dose, it is not surprising that natural food plants are toxic under certain conditions. Toxicity from common natural foods has resulted from long-term consumption of a single food item or from short periods of consumption of foods containing unusually high levels of a toxic su...

Hepatic metabolism and bioactivation of mycotoxins and plant toxins.

The intoxication of livestock from ingested feed contaminated with naturally occurring toxicants is of great economic importance. Certain toxicants require enzymatic bioactivation before harmful effects are exhibited. In the liver, the cytochrome P-450 dependent mixed function oxidase (MFO) system normally metabolizes foreign compounds (xenobiotics) into more polar, more excretable and less tox...

Introduction to the Toxins Special Issue on Plant Toxins