Abstract
Chemical detoxification and physical destruction of aflatoxins in foods and feed commodities are mostly unattainable in a way that preserves the edibility of the food. Therefore, preventing mycotoxins in general and aflatoxins in particular from entering the food chain is a better approach. This requires early detection of the aflatoxin-causing organisms. Detection and quantification of aflatoxin-producing fungi has always been a challenge, especially within species of Aspergillus and Penicillium. Culture-based methods require a high level of expertise and a list of sophisticated equipment. Furthermore, even for a trained taxonomist, species that are identical in morphology, physiology, and nutritional aspects can be challenging to classify. Fungal taxonomy has changed over the past few decades; more species are being reclassified, and new species are being described due to advances in sequencing and genome assembly. These developments make the use of PCR-based approaches practical, rapid, and more reliable for the identification of fungi to the species level. This chapter presents a variety of protocols to detect and quantify aflatoxin-producing fungi using mycotoxin biosynthesis pathway genes.
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Srour, A.Y., Fakhoury, A.M., Brown, R.L. (2017). Targeting Aflatoxin Biosynthetic Genes. In: Moretti, A., Susca, A. (eds) Mycotoxigenic Fungi. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1542. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6707-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6707-0_10
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