Review on microbial degradation of zearalenone and aflatoxins

The widespread contamination by mycotoxins, especially zearalenone and aflatoxins, in crops and their by-products has caused severe undesirable effects on human health and commercial trade. Researchers had screened out microorganisms from various media for degrading zearalenone and aflatoxins, and the results of a lot of studies showed that enzymes derived from microbial strains play a key role in degrading mycotoxins. Genetic engineering technology had been applied to improve the heterologously expressed degrading enzymes in several mature microbial hosts such as Escherichia coli and Pichia pastoris. The separated and purified recombinant enzyme had high activity in degrading mycotoxins in vitro. This review summarized the types of mycotoxins-degrading microorganisms and enzymes, and the progress on synthesis of heterologously expressed degrading enzymes by genetic engineering technology as well as related researches on improving the effect of degrading enzymes. We also prospected the future development in the study of using recombinant enzymes formed by genetic engineering technology to realize the simultaneous degradation of multiple mycotoxins in crops.