Evaluación cinética y molecular de levaduras fructofílicas aisladas del mezcal tamaulipeco

Abstract

The Mexican state of Tamaulipas has the potential to become one of the main producers of mezcal. But contrary to what is known about other alcoholic beverages, the mycoflora involved in this alcoholic fermentation has not been completely identified nor characterised from the metabolic point of view. There is an increasing industrial interest on knowing if the native yeasts associated to agave must fermentations possess a fructophilic behaviour, favoured by the natural high fructose composition of the agave musts. Moreover, the kinetic characterisation of these yeasts and the molecular analysis carried out on the hexose transporters genes reported to be involved in the glucose and fructose consumption is pertinent, and several studies on Saccharomyces cerevisiae have demonstrated a differential preference for each hexose. In this study, a set of 17 yeast isolates were chosen from an original collection of 103 yeast isolated at the mezcalería El Palmar Emilio Lozoya, which is located at San Carlos (Tamaulipas, Mexico) from different stages of the fermentation. Only those belonging to S. cerevisiae specie were studied, mainly concerning the polymorphisms found on their two main hexose transporter genes associated to a preferential consumption of fructose, HXT1 and HXT3, and results compared to a control strain. The results obtained showed that there is no a direct link between the fructophilic phenotype and/or the structure of these genes and that more studies are needed to establish such relationships