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Patulin, a toxic secondary metabolite of fungi, exists widely and stably in fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and Chinese medicinal materials. Patulin enters the body through skin contact or food intake, posing a great threat to the health of humans and animals. Previous studies have shown that patulin can induce genotoxicity, immunotoxicity and reproductive toxicity, damaging the intestine, kidney, liver and other organs in the body. The toxic mechanism of patulin involves inducing damage to biological macromolecular structures, oxidative stress injury and cell autophagy as well as damaging intestinal flora homeostasis. In this article, the recent status of patulin contamination in foods is reviewed, with an emphasis on the latest progress in research on the toxicity and mechanism of action of patulin. It is hoped that this review will provide a theoretical basis for patulin detoxification.

Proteins are carriers of biological functions and the effects of atmospheric-pressure non-thermal plasmas on proteins are important to applications such as sterilization and plasma-induced apoptosis of cancer cells. Herein, we report our detailed investigation of the effects of helium-oxygen non-thermal dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasmas on the inactivation of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) enzyme solutions. Circular dichroism (CD) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) indicate that the loss of activity stems from plasma-induced modification of the secondary molecular structure as well as polymerization of the peptide chains. Raising the treatment intensity leads to a reduced alpha-helix content, increase in the percentage of the beta-sheet regions and random sequence, as well as gradually decreasing LDH activity. However, the structure of the LDH plasma-treated for 300 seconds exhibits a recovery trend after storage for 24 h and its activity also increases slightly. By comparing direct and indirect plasma treatments, plasma-induced LDH inactivation can be attributed to reactive species (RS) in the plasma, especially ones with a long lifetime including hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and nitrate ion which play the major role in the alteration of the macromolecular structure and molecular diameter in lieu of heat, UV radiation, and charged particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]