Amplified fragment-length polymorphism, a new method for the analysis of brewer's yeast DNA polymorphism

This study sought to confirm the utility of amplified fragment-length polym orphism for identifying brewery yeast strains. Our results were promising, since single primer pairs can be used to distinguish most yeast strains. Th e use of several primer pairs, however, should still increase the method's reproducibility, Furthermore, this technique yields quantitative data on ge netic polymorphism. Among the 26 strains studied, we calculated a 55% avera ge of shared fragments. This similarity indicator was higher for bottom-fer menting strains (72%) than for top-fermentation yeasts (45%).