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Abstract
Zearalenone (ZEN), a nonsteroidal estrogenic mycotoxin, causes enormous economic losses in the food and feed industries. Simple, rapid, low-cost, and quantitative analysis of ZEN is particularly urgent in the fields of food safety and animal husbandry. Using the bioluminescent bacterium Photobacterium phosphoreum T3, we propose a bioluminescence inhibition assay to evaluate ZEN levels quickly. The limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), and quantitative working range of this bioluminescence inhibition assay were 0.1 µg/mL, 5 µg/mL, and 5-100 µg/mL, respectively. The concentration-response curve of the bioluminescence inhibition rate and ZEN concentration was plotted within the range 5 to 100 μg/mL, as follows: y = 0.0069x2 – 0.0190x + 7.9907 (R2 = 0.9943, y is luminescence inhibition rate, x is ZEN concentration). First, we used the bioluminescence inhibition assay to detect the remaining ZEN in samples treated with purified lactonohydrolase ZHD101. The bioluminescence inhibition assay results showed a strong correlation with the HPLC analysis. Furthermore, we successfully evaluated the overall toxicity of samples treated with purified peroxidase Prx and H2O2 using the P. phosphoreum T3 bioluminescence inhibition assay. The results indicate that the degradation products of ZEN created by purified peroxidase Prx and H2O2 showed little toxicity to P. phosphoreum T3. In this study, a simple, rapid, and low-cost assay method of zearalenone by bioluminescent P. phosphoreum T3 was developed. The bioluminescence inhibition assay could be used to estimate the efficiency of enzymatic degradation of ZEN.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.