Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
C
HAPTER
16
Detection of Toxigenic and
Pathogenic Fungi Targeting
Metabolic Pathway Genes
Venkataramana Mudili, S. Chandra Nayaka,
H.S. Murali
and H.V. Batra*
Abstract
Mycotoxins are compounds from fungi that contaminate foodstuff and have
detrimental effects on humans and animals CAST, Mycotoxins: risks in
plant, animal and human systems, Council for Agricultural Science and
Technology, Ames, IA (2003) [2/1/06]
http://www.cast-science.org/cast/
pub/Mycotoxins.pdf. They are referred to as secondary metabolites which are
low molecular weight compounds that do not contribute to the bioenerget-
ics of the producing fungi. The rapid and accurate identifi cation of toxigenic
fungi would be desirable, such that early intervention steps could be ap-
plied to help limit the amounts of contaminated cereals and cereal based food
products gaining access to the human food chain. Various PCR-based tech-
niques have been developed to detect and quantify mycotoxigenic fungi. These
fungi have been detected based on specifi c target DNA from mycotoxigenic
genes, other genes, ribosomal DNA or unique DNA bands from random am-
plifi ed polymorphic DNA analysis. In the present chapter the suitability of
mycotoxin genes or pathogenic genes encoding related metabolic compounds
as PCR gene probes in screens for identifying mycotoxigenic fungi is
reviewed with particular reference to PCR of
Aspergillus
,
Fusarium
and
Penicil-
lium
spp.
