Update on molecular characterization for yeast of industrial interest

Abstract

Yeasts, besides being a model of biomedical research, have various applications in the food industry, in agriculture and the production of ethanol fuel. Since the quality and quantity of the product depend on the dynamics and frequency of microorganisms present in the fermentation, the use of molecular characterization tools has been increased and popularized in the industries that use yeast. These techniques are based on amplification or analysis by restriction enzyme of a portion of yeast genomic DNA and are classified according their ability of taxonomic resolution to discriminate at inter- or intra-specific level. The first part of this review includes interspecific tests such as, restriction analysis or RFLP for the ITS2 regions, ITS1-5.8, D1 / D2 of ribosomal DNA 26S genes. The second part includes, tests commonly used for characterization at strain level, such as random amplified DNA polymorphism (RAPD), Chromosome analysis by pulsed gel field electrophoresis (PFGE), restriction analysis of mitochondrial DNA (ADNmt- RFLP), analysis of the mini / micro satellites and DNA fingerprinting by amplifying interdelta regions of Ty transposons. This review describes and discuses technical details of the most commonly used methods for molecular characterization of yeast and some examples of their applications in the industrial context.