Yeast Diversity in Honey and Pollen Samples from Stingless Bees in the State of Bahia, Brazil: Use of the MALDI-TOF MS/Genbank Proteomic Technique

Raquel Nunes Almeida da Silva; Karina Teixeira Magalhães-Guedes; Rogério Marcos de Oliveira Alves; Angélica Cristina Souza; Rosane Freitas Schwan; Marcelo Andrés Umsza-Guez

doi:10.3390/microorganisms12040678

Yeast Diversity in Honey and Pollen Samples from Stingless Bees in the State of Bahia, Brazil: Use of the MALDI-TOF MS/Genbank Proteomic Technique

Microorganisms. 2024 Mar 28;12(4):678. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms12040678.

Authors

Raquel Nunes Almeida da Silva¹, Karina Teixeira Magalhães-Guedes¹, Rogério Marcos de Oliveira Alves², Angélica Cristina Souza³, Rosane Freitas Schwan³, Marcelo Andrés Umsza-Guez^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Food Science Postgraduate Program, Faculty of Pharmacy, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador 40170-100, Brazil.
² Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Bahia-IFBaiano, Catu 48110-000, Brazil.
³ Department of Biology, Microbiology Sector, Federal University of Lavras, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil.
⁴ Biotechnology Department, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador 40110-902, Brazil.

Abstract

(1) Background: The identification of microorganisms includes traditional biochemical methods, molecular biology methods evaluating the conserved regions of rRNA, and the molecular biology of proteins (proteomics), such as MALDI-TOF MS mass spectrometry. This work aimed to identify the biodiversity of yeasts associated with stingless bee species' honey and pollen, Melipona scutellaris, Nannotrigona testaceicornes, and Tetragonisca angustula, from the region of São Gonçalo dos Campos-Bahia (BA) state, Brazil. (2) Methods: Cellular proteins were extracted from 2837 microbial isolates (pollen and honey) and identified via MALDI-TOF MS. The identified yeast species were also compared to the mass spectra of taxonomically well-characterized reference strains, available from the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database. (3) Results: Nine yeast species were identified: Candida maltosa, Candida norvegica, Kazachstania telluris, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Scheffersomyces insectosus, Meyerozyma guilliermondii, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Kazachstania exigua, and Starmerella lactis-condensi. Nannotrigona testaceicornes pollen had the highest number of yeast colonies. The yeasts Brettanomyces bruxellensis and Kazachstania telluris showed high populations in the samples of Nannotrigona testaceicornes and Melipona scutellaris, respectively. This work shows that there is some sharing of the same species of yeast between honey and pollen from the same beehive. (4) Conclusions: A total of 71.84% of the identified species present a high level of confidence at the species level. Eight yeast species (Candida maltosa, Candida norvegica, Kazachstania telluris, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Scheffersomyces insectosus, Meyerozyma guilliermondii, Kazachstania exigua, and Starmerella lactis-condensi) were found for the first time in the samples that the authors inspected. This contributes to the construction of new knowledge about the diversity of yeasts associated with stingless bee products, as well as to the possibility of the biotechnological application of some yeast species.

Keywords: Brettanomyces bruxellensis; Candida maltosa; Candida norvegica; Kazachstania exigua; Kazachstania telluris; Meyerozyma guilliermondii; Scheffersomyces insectosus; Schizosaccharomyces pombe; Starmerella lactis-condensi.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by “Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior”—Brazil (Capes)-Code 001. Process No: 88887.682738/2022-00-UFBA, “Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico”—Brazil CNPq (Research Productivity fellow, Proc. 309955/2022-0), and the APC was funded by UFBA (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil).