Recently, a veterinary pharmacology＆toxicology team from Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) published online a review paper entitled Mitochondrion: A new molecular target and potential treatment strategies against trichothecenes in Trends in Food Science & Technology. PhD student Huang Deyu is the first author and Prof Wang Xu and Prof Yuan Zonghui are the corresponding authors.
Trichothecenes are a large family of secondary metabolites produced by Fusarium. They are commonly found in many grains such as wheat, barley, oats and maize, which pose a great threat to animals and human beings. Early studies considered ribosomes the molecular target for trichothecenes, which could cause ribosome stress response. Follow-up studies, however, uncovered that there probably existed some other molecular targets, but it was unclear that whether mitochondrion was the direct target of trichothecenes.
Based on current evidences, a great deal of data and analysis from experiments, the paper systematically demonstrated the critical role the mitochondria played in trichothecene-induced toxicity and indicated that mitochondrion is a new molecular target of toxicity for trichothecenes. In fact, trichothecenes can contribute to ROS generation, lowering mitochondrial membrane potential and inducing mitochondria-dependent apoptosis. This paper gave evidences for the mitochondrial dysfunction caused by trichothecenes, such as mitochondrial biosynthesis inhibition, energy metabolism, mitochondrial gene expression abnormalities, and respiratory chain damage, as well as mitochondria-related changes in miRNA expression and in research progress on antagonists. As the mitochondrion is the molecular target, this article offers related treatment strategies for antagonizing the toxicity of trichothecenes and provides scientific evidence for taking precaution against trichothecenes.
A schematic illustration of protective effects of various antioxidants against trichothecene-induced oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction in Fig 1
In recent years, this team has carried out a lot of work on trichothecene toxicology. Their findings have been published in Food ChemToxicol, 2019; Toxicology, 2019 Food Chem Toxicol, 2019, 2018; Toxicol Lett, 2018; Toxicol Lett, 2018; Toxicology, 2018; Food Chem Toxicol, 2017; Toxicology, 2017.
