Mycotoxins are metabolites produced by fungi growing in food or feed, which can produce toxic effects and seriously threaten the health of humans and animals. Mycotoxins are commonly found in food and feed, and are of significant concern due to their hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, and ability to damage the immune and reproductive systems. Traditional physical and chemical detoxification methods to treat mycotoxins in food and feed products have limitations, such as loss of nutrients, reagent residues, and secondary pollution to the environment. Thus, there is an urgent need for new detoxification methods to effectively control mycotoxins and treat mycotoxin pollution. In recent years, microbial detoxification technology has been widely used for the degradation of mycotoxins in food and feed because this approach offers the potential for treatment with high efficiency, low toxicity, and strong specificity, without damage to nutrients. This article reviews the application of microbial detoxification technology for removal of common mycotoxins such as Aflatoxin, Ochratoxin, Zearalenone, Deoxynivalenol, and Fumonisins, and discusses the development trend of this important technology.

Ferric ions (Fe³⁺ ions) and l-cysteine (( l-Cys) in the human body have always played an irreplaceable role in biological processes, and overload or deficiency of Fe³⁺ ions and l-Cys in the biological system leads to various diseases. In this work, N,S-co-doped red-emitting carbon dots (R-CDs) were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. Because the doping of N and S gives a unique functional group distribution on the surface of R-CDs, it can be complexed with Fe³⁺ ions to construct an energy transfer quenching system. However, the presence of l-Cys competitively binds to Fe³⁺ ions, thus resulting in the photoluminescence recovery of R-CDs. Therefore, a “switch-on” dual function sensing platform has successfully been developed based on R-CDs for rapid identification and quantification of Fe³⁺ ions and l-Cys. The linear detection range of Fe³⁺ ions is 0–30 μM (limit of detection (LOD): 0.27 μM) and that of l-Cys is 0–24 μM (LOD: 0.14 μM). The sensor platform was used to detect Fe³⁺ ions and l-Cys in human serum samples with satisfactory results. Compared with traditional detection methods, this method is more time-saving and efficient and can be completed in 3 min. It is worth mentioning that the R-CDs not only has high optical stability but also has negligible cytotoxicity and has been successfully applied to in vitro/vivo imaging, indicating that R-CDs have excellent tissue penetration and biomarker potential. More interestingly, the switch-on fluorescence behavior for stepwise detection of Fe³⁺ ions and l-Cys can also be observed in cell imaging, which provides the possibility of visual detection of the probe to be applied in vivo.

Zearalenone (ZEN) is one of the most common mycotoxin contaminants in food. For food safety, an efficient and environmental-friendly approach to ZEN degradation is significant. In this study, an Aspergillus niger strain, FS10, was stimulated with 1.0 μg/mL ZEN for 24 h, repeating 5 times to obtain a stressed strain, Zearalenone-Stressed-FS10 (ZEN-S-FS10), with high degradation efficiency. The results show that the degradation rate of ZEN-S-FS10 to ZEN can be stabilized above 95%. Through metabolomics analysis of the metabolome difference of FS10 before and after ZEN stimulation, it was found that the change of metabolic profile may be the main reason for the increase in the degradation rate of ZEN. The optimization results of degradation conditions of ZEN-S-FS10 show that the degradation efficiency is the highest with a concentration of 10⁴ CFU/mL and a period of 28 h. Finally, we analyzed the degradation products by UPLC-q-TOF, which shows that ZEN was degraded into two low-toxicity products: C₁₈H₂₂O₈S (Zearalenone 4-sulfate) and C₁₈H₂₂O₅ ((E)-Zearalenone). This provides a wide range of possibilities for the industrial application of this strain.

Mycotoxins are a class of exogenous metabolites that are major contributors to foodborne diseases and pose a potential threat to human health. However, little attention has been paid to trace mycotoxin co-exposure situations in vivo. To address this, we devised a novel analytical strategy, both highly sensitive and comprehensive, for quantifying 67 mycotoxins in human plasma samples. This method employs isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) for approximately 40% of the analytes and utilizes internal standard quantification for the rest. The mycotoxins were classified into three categories according to their physicochemical properties, facilitating the optimization of extraction and detection parameters to improve analytical performance. The lowest limits of detection and quantitation were 0.001–0.5 μg/L and 0.002–1 μg/L, respectively, the intra-day precision ranged from 1.8% to 11.9% RSD, and the intra-day trueness ranged from 82.7–116.6% for all mycotoxins except Ecl, DH-LYS, PCA, and EnA (66.4–129.8%), showing good analytical performance of the method for biomonitoring. A total of 40 mycotoxins (including 24 emerging mycotoxins) were detected in 184 plasma samples (89 from infertile males and 95 from healthy males) using the proposed method, emphasizing the widespread exposure of humans to both traditional and emerging mycotoxins. The most frequently detected mycotoxins were ochratoxin A, ochratoxin B, enniatin B, and citrinin. The incidence of exposure to multiple mycotoxins was significantly higher in infertile males than in healthy subjects, particularly levels of ochratoxin A, ochratoxin B, and citrinin, which were significantly increased. It is necessary to carry out more extensive biological monitoring to provide data support for further study of the relationship between mycotoxins and male infertility.