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 polymorphism for identifying brewery yeast strains. Our results were promising, since single primer pairs can be used to distinguish most yeast strains. The use of several primer pairs, however, should still increase the method's reproducibility, Furthermore, this technique yields quantitative data on genetic polymorphism. Among the 26 strains studied, we calculated a 55% average of shared fragments. This similarity indicator was higher for bottom-fermenting strains (72%) than for top-fermentation yeasts (45%).