Detection of a newFusariummasked mycotoxin in wheat grain by high-resolution LC–Orbitrap™ MS

Abstract

A new Fusarium mycotoxin glucoside, fusarenon X-glucoside (FUXGlc), is reported for the first time in wheat grain that was artificially infected with Fusarium fungi. This new glucoside was identified using LC Orbitrap high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-Orbitrap MS) analysis on the basis of accurate mass measurement of characteristic ions and MS/MS fragmentation patterns. Although the absolute structure of FUXGlc was not clarified by LC-MS, 3-OH glucosylation seems to be the most probable structure based on the fragment profile and considering that deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside (DON3Glc) was reported as the predominant glucosylated derivative of the structurally similar mycotoxin, deoxynivalenol (DON). Another mycotoxin glucoside, nivalenol-glucoside (NIVGlc) was also found in the same grain sample. According to the semi-quantification by LC-Orbitrap MS, more than 15% of FUX and NIV were estimated to be converted into respective glucosides. The existence of these masked mycotoxins should be taken into account in risk assessment, since they could be transformed back to the corresponding mycotoxins under certain conditions; for example, through various food processing operations or in the digestive tract of mammals after ingestion.

Advanced LC–MS-based methods to study the co-occurrence and metabolization of multiple mycotoxins in cereals and cereal-based food

“…The increasing interest in the use of HRMS is evident from the number of articles that have been published [51,83,84]. The presence of glycosylated metabolites of HT2 and T2 in wheat, oat, and barley was confirmed by Veprikova et al [83].…”

Scientific Opinion on the risks for human and animal health related to the presence of modified forms of certain mycotoxins in food and feed

“…According to the authors, more than 15 % of FUS-X and NIV were converted into their respective glucosides (Nakagawa et al, 2011). It should be underlined that FUS-XGlc was not reported in natural infected samples so far.…”

“…In HPLC-MS/MS studies of wheat grain artificially infected with Fusarium fungi, two compounds were detected which were tentatively identified as 3-O-monoglucosides of NIV and FUS-X on the basis of accurate mass measurements, characteristic ions and MS/MS fragmentation patterns (Nakagawa et al, 2011). The elemental formulas and molecular weights are C 21 H 30 O 12 and 474 for the putative NIV3Glc, and C 23 H 32 O 13 and 516 for FUS-X3Glc, respectively.…”

Mass-spectrometry-based metabolomics analysis for foodomics

“…Other reported MS-based metabolomics studies on food safety and quality focus on characterizing transgenic foods [57], plants [58,59] and crops, such as wheat and cereals [60][61][62][63], fruit juice [64][65][66][67][68], beers [69][70][71], shellfish [72,73], spices [74,75], food supplements [76] and drinking water [77]. Table 1 shows several representative applications of MS-based metabolomics in food safety and assurance assessment [52,54,55,67,78,63,[79][80][81].…”