Diversity analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolated from natural sources by multilocus sequence typing (MLST)

We used multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to analyze the diversity of natural isolates of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the most important microorganism in alcoholic fermentation. Six loci, ADP1, RPN2, GLN4, ACC1, MET4, and NUP116, in S. cerevisiae genome were selected as MLST markers. To investigate genetic diversity within S. cerevisiae, 42 S. cerevisiae isolated from natural sources in Korea as well as six S. cerevisiae obtained from Genbank and four industrial S. cerevisiae were examined using MLST. Twenty-six polymorphic sites were found in the six loci. Among them, ACC1 had the most genetic variation with eight polymorphic sites. MLST differentiated the 52 strains into three clades. Alcohol fermentation results revealed that S. cerevisiae in Clade III produced less alcohol than those in Clades I and II. These results suggested that MLST is a powerful tool to differentiate S. cerevisiae and can potentially be used to select S. cerevisiae suitable for industrial use.