According to the FDA website: Midwestern Pet Foods, Inc. of Evansville, Ind. is expanding its December 30, 2020 voluntary recall of certain dog and cat food products produced in its Chickasha Operations Facility to include all dog and cat pet food products made with corn products because those products may contain aflatoxin levels that exceed acceptable limits.

Mingkun Yang
Nov 24, 2020; 0:RA120.002144v1-mcp.RA120.002144
Research

Aspergillus flavus (A. flavus), a pathogenic fungus, can produce carcinogenic and toxic aflatoxins that are a serious agricultural and medical threat worldwide. Attempts to decipher the aflatoxin biosynthetic pathway have been hampered by the lack of a high-quality genome annotation for A. flavus. To address this gap, we performed a comprehensive proteogenomic analysis using high-accuracy mass spectrometry data for this pathogen. The resulting high-quality dataset confirmed the translation of 8,724 previously-predicted genes, and identified 732 novel proteins, 269 splice variants, 447 single amino acid variants, 188 revised genes. A subset of novel proteins was experimentally validated by RT-PCR and synthetic peptides. Further functional annotation suggested that a number of the identified novel proteins may play roles in aflatoxin biosynthesis and stress responses in A. flavus. This comprehensive strategy also identified a wide range of post-translational modifications (PTMs), including 3,461 modification sites from 1,765 proteins. Functional analysis suggested the involvement of these modified proteins in the regulation of cellular metabolic and aflatoxin biosynthetic pathways. Together, we provided a high quality annotation of A. flavus genome and revealed novel insights into the mechanisms of aflatoxin production and pathogenicity in this pathogen.

IIMR says various technologies can be used to reduce the aflatoxin

Spiralling aflatoxin levels in groundnuts are giving nightmares to exporters in Gujarat, which accounts for over 50 per cent kernel exports from India.