Targeting Mitochondria to Inhibit Aflatoxin Production: Mechanistic Insight

Contamination of agricultural crops by aflatoxin, a potent carcinogenic fungal toxin, is a global issue that poses serious health risks to humans and livestock while inflicting significant economic damage on the agricultural sector. Specific inhibitors of aflatoxin production hold promise not only as effective agents for controlling aflatoxin contamination, but also as valuable tools for uncovering the regulatory mechanisms of secondary metabolism through the elucidation of their modes of action. Unexpectedly, inhibitors whose modes of action we have clarified were found to target mitochondrial components, rather than proteins directly involved in the aflatoxin biosynthetic pathway. In this article, we review inhibitors and inhibitory mixtures that act on mitochondria and explore the relationship between mitochondrial function and aflatoxin production through their modes of action.