Mycotoxins present a major problem as animal feed and food contaminants with mutagenic, teratogenic, cancerogenic and immuno-depressant potential. To alleviate these effects, inclusion of mycotoxin binders into diets is recommended. Here we propose fungal biomass as a novel essential component of such binders. This is another example of using evolutionary mycotoxin targets as antidote decoys. Fusarium sambucinum biomass was tested in in vitro assay, using mixture of three mycotoxins detrimental to North American and European industry - deoxynivalenol, ochratoxin and zearalenone. Mycotoxin binding measured using HPLC/MS/MS is summarized in the table:
Adsorbent Candidate, 5 g/L, pH 6.5, 37°C, 1 hour | % of mycotoxins adsorbed from a mixture of 3 toxins, 1 mg/L each | ||
DON | OTA | ZEA | |
Mycofix Plus (Biomin) | 4.8 | 0.1 | 42.9 |
Mycosorb (Alltech) | 55.3 | 16.1 | 62.7 |
Yeast Cell Wall | 46.7 | 7 | 56.7 |
Fusarium biomass, 5µm | 54.8 | 7.7 | 80.2 |
In another instance, Trichoderma reesei biomass, coming from a fungal fermentation after separation of cellulase-containing cultural filtrate, was used. Several types of downstream were tried, leading to different final protein content. The biomass was tested for binding T-2 toxin, results being summarized in the table:
Protein content, % | Adsorption, % | Desorption, % | Residual adsorption, % | |
pH 7 | pH 2 | pH 8 | pH 2 | |
5.2 | 70.7 | 77.0 | 10.0 | 67.0 |
8.2 | 77.0 | 77.0 | 4.1 | 72.9 |
10.3 | 70.7 | 70.7 | 10.9 | 59.8 |
16.8 | 52.0 | 61.4 | 5.9 | 55.5 |
The results obtained show that fungal biomass, such as a by-product of industrial fermentation, is superior to yeast cell wall-based mainstream commercial binders as a mycotoxin binding additive.