Analysis of microbial populations in wines through NGS methodologies.

Identifier:  TDX:3341

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3341

Authors:  Kioroglou, Dimitrios

Abstract:
evaluación de los resultados derivados en función de su alineación con hallazgos anteriores y su capacidad para proporcionar nuevos conocimientos. En general, el trabajo actual ha logrado corroborar estudios previos, sugerir mejoras sobre las implementaciones relacionadas con la bioinformática y la estadística y ampliar nuestro conocimiento sobre varios factores que influyen en la vinificación. Winemaking is a intricate process, involving various stages until the wine bottling and commercialization. During this process, the limited amount of nutrients leads to microbial competition, which in turn results in the production of metabolites that modulate the final wine product. This microbial activity may confer beneficial or undesirable organoleptic characteristics to the wine quality. The past years, the main focus has been given to the detection and monitoring of specific putative wine-spoiling microorganisms and the application of empirical methodologies for the prevention of unwanted microbial growth. Nevertheless, research findings have shown a multifactorial basis of the wine spoilage and underlined the need for an innovative strategy that will allow the study of the microbial diversity in its entirety. Next-generation-sequencing appears a suitable and promising approach for this purpose, as it seems able to overcome the limitations of conventional methodologies. In this work, various aspects associated to the NGS-based metataxonomic analysis have been studied, in relation to the performance of the NGS technology against conventional applications, and the establishment of a bioinformatic and statistical framework for the analysis of metataxonomic data.