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 ...

Aspergilloses are fungal diseases in humans and animals that is caused by members of the genus Aspergillus. Aspergillus flavus is an important opportunistic pathogen, second only to A. fumigatus as a cause of human aspergillosis. Differences in virulence among A. flavus isolates from clinical and other substrates and mating types are not well known. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has bec...

Lysine methyltransferases transfer methyl groups in specific lysine sites, which regulates a variety of important biological processes in eukaryotes. In this study, we characterized a novel homolog of the yeast methyltransferase DOT1 in A. flavus, and observed the roles of dot1 in A. flavus. Deletion of dot1 showed a significant decrease in conidiation, but an increase in sclerotia formation. A...

Elastolytic and elastase inhibitory activities were investigated for 13 strains of Aspergillus fumigatus, three strains of Aspergillus flavus and three strains of Aspergillus niger. Nine of the 13 strains of A. fumigatus and all strains of A. flavus demonstrated elastase activity (more than 1 unit ml(-1)). Six of the 13 strains of A. fumigatus and all strains of A. flavus expressed elastase inh...

Aspergillus flavus (A. flavus) producing aflatoxin frequently contaminates crops such as soybeans. The growth of this mold on soybeans and other foodstuffs is affected by temperature and relative humidity (RH). The aim of this study was to measure the growth of A. flavus BIO 2237 and aflatoxin production at different temperatures and RH. Aspergillus flavus BIO 2237 was isolated from Indonesia o...

Production of the harmful carcinogenic aflatoxins by Aspergillus parasiticus and Aspergillus flavus has been postulated to be a mechanism to relieve oxidative stress. The msnA gene of A. parasiticus and A. flavus is the ortholog of Saccharomyces cerevisiae MSN2 that is associated with multi-stress response. Compared to wild type strains, the msnA deletion (∆msnA) strains of A. parasiticus and A...

PURPOSE To document transcriptional activation (expression) of key aflatoxin biosynthetic pathway genes in corneal isolates of Aspergillus flavus. METHODS The expression of certain regulatory (aflatoxin regulatory [aflR] and aflatoxin J [aflJ]) and structural (polyketide synthase acetate [pksA] and norsolonic acid-1 [nor-1]) genes in four corneal A. flavus isolates was evaluated by reverse tr...