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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Foodborne Toxin Detection and Prevention Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #306135
Title: Molecular and physiological characterization of Pichia anomala WRL-076 for safety assessment

Author
item Hua, Sui Sheng
item Sarreal, Siov
item Jones, Amelia

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/20/2014
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Aflatoxin is very toxic to human and animal and is the most potent natural carcinogen known. Multiple strategies are being developed to eliminate aflatoxin in the food chain, one of which is biological control of Aspergillus flavus. Yeast species are researched in the past twenty years as potential biocontrol agents. The yeast, Pichia anomala is a species that has been isolated from many different environments. We discovered a strain, P. anomala WRL-076 which had good antagonistic activity against A. flavus. The goal of this research is to develop molecular markers which can differentiate the beneficial P. anomala strains from clinical pathogenic ones. We have recently sequenced the ribosomal IGS1 region of P. anomala isolated from agricultural fields including P. anomala WRL-076 and pathogenic strains from CDC (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA, USA). The molecular data shows it is possible to distinguish beneficial strains from pathogenic strains of P. anomala. We conducted studies on the growth temperatures of WRL-076 and isolates from plants. We found these strains did not grow at 370C.