Trichothecenes

ISMAEL MALBRÁN; CECILIA A. MOURELOS; JUAN R. GIROTTI; GLADYS A. LORI

Handbook of Foodborne Diseases

CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group

Lugar: Boca Raton; Año: 2018; p. 979 - 988

The term trichothecene is derived from Trichothecium roseum, a fungal species from which the first known representative of this group of mycotoxins (trichothecin) was isolatedin 1949. Since then, >350 fungal species have been shown to produce trichothecenes, including members of the genera Fusarium, Stachybotrys, Cryptomela, Trichoderma, Dendrodochium, Myrothecium, Memnoniella, Spicellum, Acremonium, Cephalosporium, Cylindrocladium, Dendrostilbella, Gliocladium, Microdocium, Spicellum, Trichothecium, Cercophora, Cylindrocarpon, Phoma, Phomopsis, Ceratopycnidium, and Verticinimonosporium. However, only a few trichothecenes produced by a small number of fungal genera have been found as contaminants of food or been implicated in cases of human and/or animal toxicoses. In this regard, the genus Fusarium, the main known producer of nonmacrocyclic trichothecenes, accounts for the production of >80% of these molecules. Furthermore, many of the trichothecenes produced by Fusarium spp. are minor metabolites that can be produced under in vitro conditions but that do not accumulate at significant levels in the cereals affected by species of this genus. As a consequence, this chapter will focus on the 4 most important trichothecenes produced by species of the Fusarium genus: diacetoxyscirpenol (DAS), T-2 toxin, nivalenol (NIV), and deoxynivalenol (DON).