Isolation and diversity of food spoilageYarrowiayeast strains from meat

Abstract

Yeasts of the Yarrowia clade frequently occur in meat and milk products. In many cases they cause spoilage due to their strong lipolytic and proteolytic activity, and their ability to produce brown pigments. Using conventional methods, some of these yeasts can be misidentified as Yarrowia lipolytica, but using molecular biological methods it can be stated that they are members of a complex group including several different species. The aims of this study were to find a proper method to collect Yarrowia strains from raw meat, and to assign them to groups based on their physiological and molecular characteristics, followed by sequence-based identification of the selected members of each group to determine the composition of the species. This study revealed three novel Yarrowia species. From 62 samples of different raw meats 291 yeast strains were isolated, from which 118 strains proved to be members of the Yarrowia group. They could be assigned to seven species. Four of them are described species, three of ...