Chemical, Biological, and Ecological Evidence for Aerobic Deoxynivalenol Detoxification in Agronomic Soil-Derived Bacterial Communities

Deoxynivalenol (DON) is a prevalent trichothecene mycotoxin in cereals that poses food and feed safety risks while causing important economic losses. Microbial biotransformation offers a selective, mild strategy for DON detoxification. Here, we screened aerobic soil-derived bacterial communities from diverse agricultural environments, using DON as the sole carbon source for this mycotoxin depletion. More than half of the tested enrichment samples showed a reduced DON signal, as observed by HPLC-UV. To assess the biological relevance, culture extracts were tested for cytotoxicity in HepG2 cells. Z13, a soil sample that depleted DON but produced no other detectable metabolites, showed reduced cytotoxicity, comparable to the negative control. In contrast, samples that depleted DON but produced 3-keto-DON remained toxic. High-resolution LC-MS analysis indicated the formation of metabolites putatively identified as 3-keto-DON in enrichment cultures and 3-epi-DON in a Devosia strain culture. Community composition was profiled with 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, which showed that Z13 presented a remarkable drop in diversity upon microbial cultivation, and included genera such as Devosia, Nocardioides, and Pseudomonas. Together, these results provide integrated chemical, biological, and ecological evidence for aerobic DON biotransformation in soil-derived communities, identify pathway products, and highlight practical constraints related to community dependence and storage sensitivity.