TAZ-TFG-2018-2578

Identification and characterization of natural yeasts in palm wine

Castillón Clemente, Leticia
Warringer, Jonas (dir.) ; Warringer, Jonas (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, CIEN, 2018
Bioquímica y Biología Molecular y Celular department, Bioquímica y Biología Molecular area

Graduado en Biotecnología

Abstract: In this project, I identified the yeast species from over 1000 samples originating from Nigerian palm wine, using a combined protocol of PCR amplification, restriction fragment length polymorfism (RFLP) and multiplex PCR. Most of the identified samples correspond to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, usually main yeast participating in fermentation processes, which makes sense with the origin of the studied material. However, for some other results different data was obtained, which could correspond to different Saccharomyces sp. as Saccharomyces mikatae, Saccharomyces arboricola or Saccharomyces paradoxus, species that had not been previously identified in Africa. These unexpected results should be contrasted with the data obtained from the phenotyping analysis and, since the only way to unambiguously identify a species is by sequencing its DNA, the sequencing of the ITS region of a subset of the strains that seem to belong to one of the species mentioned above would be mandatory to confirm the finding.