Evaluation of two conservation methods for Kluyveromyces marxianus CCEBI 2011 at the CEBI Culture Collection.

The election of a conservation method should allow maintaining, among other parameters, the viability, purity and stability of the properties of a strain. Kluyveromyces marxianus CCEBI 2011 is a yeast with attractive biotechnological potentialities, conserved at the CEBI Culture Collection by two methods: periodic transfer and sterile distilled water (Castellani method). In this study for determining the efficacy and quality of the two methods being used for the conservation of K. marxianus, we evaluated parameters such as viability, purity, identity and biotechnological properties. For both methods we obtained a high purity and a viability of 5.31x1010 cells/mL and 6.8x1010 cells/ mL, for the Castellani method and the periodic transfer method respectively. In this last method we obtained the highest values for ethanol tolerance (11%), ethanol production (6.08 ± 0.11 g/L) and pectonolitic activity (15.29 ± 1.71 U/mL). For the two methods the taxonomic classification of this strain as K. marxianus was corroborated according to the analysis of the ITSI-gen 5.8S ARNr-ITS2 regions. It was shown that the conservation methods being used are effective and that they have maintained the quality of the biotechnological potentialities of this microorganism during more than 10 years.