Advances in Food Mycology

4 Jens C. Frisvad et al.
Furthermore we exclude Basidiomycete toxins, because these are
ingested by eating fruiting bodies, a problem different from the ingestion
of toxins produced by microfungi. The definition of microfungi
is not rigorous, but understood here to refer principally to
Ascomycetous fungi, including those with no sexual stage. Lower
fungi, from the subkingdom Zygomycotina, i.e. genera such as
Rhizopus and Mucor, are not excluded, but compounds of sufficient
toxicity to be termed mycotoxins have not been found in these genera,
except perhaps for rhizonin A and B from Rhizopus microsporus
(Jennessen et al., 2005).
This paper sets out to provide an up to date authoritative list of
mycotoxins which are known to have caused, or we believe have the
potential to cause, disease in humans or vertebrate animals, and the
fungal species which have been shown to produce them.
We believe that all of the important and known mycotoxins produced
by Aspergillus, Fusarium and Penicillium species have been
included in this list. However, it is possible that other species will be
found which are capable of producing known toxins, or other toxins
of consequence will arise. It is also important to note that there are
many errors in the literature concerning the mycotoxins and the fungi
which produce them (Frisvad et al., 2006).
Many other toxic chemicals, known to be produced by species from
these genera, have been excluded from this list for one reason or
another. The very toxic chemicals, the janthitrems, have been excluded
from this list because the species which make them, including P. janthinellum,
normally do not grow to a significant extent in foods. On the
other hand Penicillium tularense has recently been demonstrated to produce
janthitrems in tomatoes (Andersen and Frisvad, 2004), so maybe
these mycotoxins may occur sporadically. Other compounds which
occur quite commonly in foods, including mycophenolic acid (Lafont
et al., 1979, Lopez-Diaz et al., 1996; Overy and Frisvad, 2005), are of
such low acute toxicity to vertebrate animals that their involvement in
human or animal diseases appears unlikely. On the other hand
mycophenolic acid has been reported to be strongly immunosuppressive
(Bentley, 2000), so this fungal metabolite could pave the way for bacterial
infections. Toxic low molecular weight compounds that may not be
considered mycotoxins in a strict sense include aflatrem, botryodiploidin,
brefeldin A, chetomin, chetocins, emestrin, emodin,
engleromycin, fusarin C, lolitrems, paspalicine, paspaline, paspalinine,
paspalitrems, paxilline, territrems, tryptoquivalins, tryptoquivalons,
verruculotoxin, verticillins, and viridicatumtoxin which are among the
fungal secondary metabolites listed as mycotoxins by Betina (1989).