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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Background: ochratoxins are mycotoxins produced by filamentous fungi with important implications in the food manufacturing industry due to their toxicity. Decontamination by specific ochratoxin-degrading enzymes has become an interesting alternative for the treatment of contaminated food commodities. Methods: using a structure-based approach based on homology modeling, blind molecular docking of substrates and characterization of low-frequency protein motions, we performed a proteome mining in filamentous fungi to characterize new enzymes with potential ochratoxinase activity. Results: the proteome mining results demonstrated the ubiquitous presence of fungal binuclear zinc-dependent amido-hydrolases with a high degree of structural homology to the already characterized ochratoxinase from Aspergillus niger. Ochratoxinase-like enzymes from ochratoxin-producing fungi showed more favorable substrate-binding pockets to accommodate ochratoxins A and B. Conclusions: filamentous fungi are an interesting and rich source of hydrolases potentially capable of degrading ochratoxins, and could be used for the detoxification of diverse food commodities.
Description
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords
Biodegradation Mycotoxin Ochratoxin A Ochratoxinase Structural biology
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Biomolecules. 2021 Jul 16;11(7):1040
Publisher
MDPI