Aflatoxin is a mycotoxin and a secondary metabolite, and the most potent known liver carcinogen that contaminates several important crops, and represents a significant threat to public health and the economy. Available approaches reported thus far have been insufficient to eliminate this threat, and therefore provide the rational to explore novel methods for preventing aflatoxin accumulation in...

Aspergillus flavus is one of the major producers of aflatoxin and can contaminate wide range of agricultural commodities either in field or in storage. 15 presumptive Aspergillus flavus has been isolated from 30 feed and grain samples. All the isolates were morphologically similar to Aspergillus flavus type strains. All the isolates were found to be aflatoxigenic. DNA sequencing of 5.8 s rDNA c...

Aspergillus flavus produces a variety of toxic secondary metabolites; among them, the aflatoxins (AFs) are the most well known. These compounds are highly mutagenic and carcinogenic, particularly AFB₁. A. flavus is capable of colonizing a number of economically-important crops, such as corn, cotton, peanut and tree nuts, and contaminating them with AFs. Molecular genetic studies in A. flavus co...

Even though the green revolution was a significant turning point in agriculture, it also marked by widespread use of chemical pesticides, which prompted severe concerns about their influence on human and environmental health. As result, demand for healthier more environmentally friendly alternatives to control plant diseases avoid food spoilage is intensifying. Among proposed alternatives, by-p...

The ver-1A gene was cloned and its nucleotide sequence was determined as part of a previous study on aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) biosynthesis in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus parasiticus SU-1. A second copy of this gene, ver-1B, was tentatively identified in this fungal strain. In this study, ver-1B was cloned by screening an A. parasiticus cosmid library with a ver-1A probe. The nucleotide sequen...

Potassium, a widely accepted macronutrient, is vital for many physiological processes such as regulation of cell volume, maintenance of intracellular pH, synthesis of proteins and activation of enzymes in filamentous fungi. Another cation, calcium, plays an essential role in many signaling processes from lower to higher eukaryotes. Imbalance in the intracellular ionic levels of potassium or cal...

Aflatoxins are secondary toxic metabolites produced by some Aspergillus spp. particularly, Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus that contaminate food and feed. The objective of this study was to evaluate the contamination of feedstuffs with Aspergillus spp. and detect genes involved in the aflatoxin biosynthesis pathway of A. flavus and A. parasiticus isolates. A total of 110 cow feed samples ...

abstract: fifteen non-aflatoxigenic strains of aspergillus flavus, represent a wide range of geographic regions of iran (six provinces include fars, ardebil, guilan, golestan, kerman and semnan) and vegetative compatibility groups (vcgs), were collected from corn (zea mays l.), peanut (arachis hypogaea l.) and pistachio (pistachia vera l.) soils and kernels, were screened for the presence of af...