Short communication Screening for toxigenic marine-derived fungi in Algerian mussels and their immediate environment Amaria Matallah-Boutiba a , Nicolas Ruiz b , Claire Sallenave-Namont b , Olivier Grovel b , Jean-Claude Amiard b , Yves François Pouchus b, ⁎, Zitouni Boutiba a a Réseau de Surveillance Environnementale, Faculté des Sciences, Université d'Oran, Algérie b Université de Nantes, Faculté de pharmacie, MMS – EA 2160, 44000 Nantes, France abstract article info Article history: Received 21 April 2011 Received in revised form 10 February 2012 Accepted 14 February 2012 Available online 25 February 2012 Keywords: marine-derived fungi mussels toxicity Artemia salina Penicillium During our search for marine-derived fungi from shellfish farming areas along the Algerian western coast, more than 250 strains were isolated from mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) and their immediate environ- ment (marine sediments and seawater). A majority of the strains isolated belonged to four genera: Penicillium (55.1%), Aspergillus (8.3%), Trichoderma (5.8%), and Cladosporium (3.7%). Extracts of 91 strains were assayed to evaluate their accute toxicity on Artemia salina larvae. Twenty-four percent of the extracts tested appeared active with different levels of toxicity. There were few toxigenic strains in those isolated from sediments whereas a majority of strains isolated from mussels exhibited toxicity. Highest activities were exhibited by strains belonging to the genus Penicillium. Their presence in shellfish farming areas confirmed the necessity to pay a peculiar attention to shellfish contamination by such fungi. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Marine fungi form a group of potential contaminants for seafood, and particularly for marine bivalves such as mussels (Zielinski et al., 2009; Zvereva and Vysotskaya, 2005). Their toxic metabolites are able to contaminate shellfish under laboratory conditions (Grovel et al., 2003; Sallenave et al., 1999) and can be found in the marine en- vironment (Poirier, et al., 2007a). They can exhibit a direct toxicity for shellfish larvae (Poirier et al., 2007b) or enhance toxicity of shellfish- contaminating phycotoxins such as domoic acid (Ruiz et al., 2010). These facts justify studies on the fungal diversity in shellfish farming areas and on the toxigenicity of the marine-derived moulds to assess the risk for shellfish or their consumers. Toxigenic fungi in marine environment mainly belong to the group of Ascomycota. For instance, marine-derived strains of the genus Trichoderma have been shown to produce a high diversity of neuroactive linear peptides called peptaibols (Landreau et al., 2002; Mohamed-Benkada et al., 2006; Ruiz et al., 2007). Marine strains of Aspergillus fumigatus isolated from shellfish farming areas produced high quantities of gliotoxin, an immunosuppressor (Grovel et al., 2002; Grovel et al., 2003; Kerzaon et al., 2008). Numerous strains of the genus Penicillium have been isolated from shellfish farming areas and were shown to produce toxic compounds such as griseoful- vin (Petit et al., 2004) or communesins (Kerzaon et al., 2009). In order to know if such toxigenic fungi were existing in Algerian shellfish farming areas, preliminary studies on Algerian western coast revealed the presence of fungal strains (Matallah-Boutiba et al., 2008; Matallah-Boutiba et al., 2009) justifying a larger study on coastal sites where mussels are cultured in farming areas or are present in natural beds and are consumed by local residents. To evaluate the toxicity of fungal strains, acute-toxicity on Artemia salina larvae was chosen because of the sensitivity of that biological model to a broad spectrum of compounds allowing the detection of numerous known mycotoxins and other toxic compounds (Brown, 1969; González et al., 2007; Harwig and Scott, 1971; Persoone, 1980). The aim of this study was to reveal the presence of toxinogenic marine-derived fungi in marine Algerian environment, especially mus- sel farming areas. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Samples and fungal strain isolation Four types of samples were collected: mussels (Mytilus gallo- provincialis), seawater, surface sediments and sediments from the layer situated 5 cm under the surface. They were collected in five sites located along the Algerian western coast near the city of Oran. Four of them were chosen for the presence of mussels (natural beds or farming areas). Two sites are sandy and three are rocky areas. Two of them were located near harbour activity of two major towns (Oran and Mostaga- nem). Fig. 1 gives the location and the characteristics of the sampling sites. Aquaculture 342-343 (2012) 75–79 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: yves-francois.pouchus@univ-nantes.fr (Y. F. Pouchus). 0044-8486/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.aquaculture.2012.02.016 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Aquaculture journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aqua-online