Abstract
Red yeasts grow on food wastes, show antagonistic activity against food-spoilage microorganisms, produce food supplements, and may be utilized as feed-supplements themselves to positively modulate the quali-quantitative composition of intestinal microbiota. Therefore, they show a variety of possible biotechnological applications in agri-food-related processes. Here, to further explore the biotechnological potential of red yeasts, eleven strains ascribed to different species of the genera Rhodotorula and Sporobolomyces, differing for biomass and carotenoids production, were characterized in vitro for biofilm formation, invasive growth, and growth at the temperature range of 20–40 °C and in vivo for their antagonistic activity against the fungal pathogen and patulin producer Penicillium expansum. Most of them formed cellular MAT and showed invasive growth as well as adhesion to plastic materials. Four strains determined a significant reduction of fruit decay caused by P. expansum on apple fruit while the remaining seven showed different degrees of biocontrol activity. Finally, none of them grew at body temperature (>37 °C). Statistical analyses of both qualitative and quantitative phenotypic data, including biomass and carotenoids production, gathered further information on the most interesting strains for the biotechnological exploitation of red yeasts in agri-food-related process.
Highlights
Red yeasts, mainly ascribed to the genera Rhodotorula and Sporobolomyces withinPucciniomycotina, are well known producers of microbial oils, surfactants, and enzymes of interest for chemical and pharmaceutical industries and carotenoids [1,2,3]
Since in S. cerevisiae biofilm forming ability is investigated through the evaluation of cellular MAT formation and adhesion to plastic materials [30], these phenotypes were analyzed in 11 red yeasts of different origins (Table 1)
To summarize the information about the phenotypes studied and to allow the identification of red yeast strains and/or phenotypes for future works aimed at red yeasts exploitation in food biotechnological processes, factor analysis of mixed data (FAMD) followed by k-means cluster analyses were carried out (Figure 4A)
Summary
Mainly ascribed to the genera Rhodotorula and Sporobolomyces withinPucciniomycotina, are well known producers of microbial oils, surfactants, and enzymes of interest for chemical and pharmaceutical industries and carotenoids [1,2,3]. The growing interest in the biotechnological exploitation of red yeasts is due to their production of carotenoids. These compounds have important biological properties such as antioxidant, photoprotective [4,5], and putative antitumor activities [6]. Of particular interest is the possibility to obtain these metabolites from by-products and wastes, increasing the sustainability of their production In this respect, some of the red yeasts grow at high cell density on a plethora of different carbon and nitrogen sources and they are generally characterized by tolerance to inhibitory compounds present in growth substrates obtained from wastes of the food industry [7].
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