Safety Evaluation and Whole Genome Sequencing of Aspergillus japonicas PJ01 Reveal Its Potential to Degrade Citrus Segments in Juice Processing

Yujiao Qian; Zhipeng Gao; Jieyi Wang; Chen Wang; Gaoyang Li; Fuhua Fu; Jiajing Guo; Yang Shan

doi:10.3390/foods10081736

Safety Evaluation and Whole Genome Sequencing of Aspergillus japonicas PJ01 Reveal Its Potential to Degrade Citrus Segments in Juice Processing

Foods. 2021 Jul 27;10(8):1736. doi: 10.3390/foods10081736.

Authors

Yujiao Qian^{1

2}, Zhipeng Gao³, Jieyi Wang¹, Chen Wang¹, Gaoyang Li^{1

2}, Fuhua Fu^{1

2}, Jiajing Guo^{1

2}, Yang Shan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Longping Branch, Graduate School of Hunan University, Changsha 410125, China.
² International Joint Lab on Fruits & Vegetables Processing, Quality and Safety, Hunan Key Lab of Fruits & Vegetables Storage, Processing, Quality and Safety, Hunan Agriculture Product Processing Institute, Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changsha 410125, China.
³ College of Animal Science and Technology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, China.

Abstract

Aspergillus japonicas PJ01 (A. japonicas PJ01) is a strain isolated from the rotten branches. In previ-ous studies, it was shown that it can produce complex enzymes to degrade polysaccharide com-ponents. In this study, we evaluated the safety of its crude enzyme solution. Acute oral toxicity, subchronic toxicity, micronucleus and sperm malformation tests all validated the high biologi-cal safety for the crude enzymes. Secondly, we carried out the citrus segment degradation ex-periment of crude enzyme solution. Compared with the control group, the crude enzyme solu-tion of A. japonicas PJ01 can completely degrade the segments in 50 min, which provides the basis for enzymatic peeling during juice processing. The whole genome sequencing showed that the genome of A. japonicus PJ01 has a GC content of 51.37% with a size of 36204647 bp, and encoded 10070 genes. GO, COG, KEGG and CAZy databases were used in gene annotation analyses. Pathway enrichment showed many genes related to carbohydrate metabolism, rich in genes re-lated to pectinase, xylanase and carboxylcellulase. Therefore, the complex enzyme produced by A. japonicus PJ01 can be used in gizzard juice processing to achieve efficient enzymatic decapsu-lation.

Keywords: Aspergillus japonicas PJ01; genome sequencing; gizzard juice process; safety evaluation; segments degradation.

Abstract

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