General evidence supporting the hypothesis that Saccharomyces cerevisiae vaginal isolates originate from food industrial environments.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains isolated from pregnant women were identified and characterized by molecular techniques which disclosed a wide chromosomal variability and possible segregations due to sporulation. The mor - phological analysis showed that very few strains were able to sporulate and generate pseudohyphae, whereas none produced proteases, raising some doubts on the importance of these characters in strain pathogenicity. The analy - sis of ethanol production revealed that these strains are quite similar to those found in fermentative plants, sug - gesting a possible derivation from the food industrial environment. Since the absence of relevant amounts of sugar does not confer selective advantage to strong fermentative metab - olisms, these findings suggest that a metabolic adaptation to the vaginal environment did not occur yet. SUMMARY