Characterization and amino acid metabolism performances of indigenous Oenococcus oeni isolated from Chinese wines

Oenococcus oeni is a multiple physical stress-tolerant lactic acid bacterium that plays an important role in wine making. It is often added as a starter culture to carry out malolactic fermentation (MLF). In this study, a total of 22 out of 127 lactic acid bacteria, isolated from Chinese wines undergoing MLF, were identified as O. oeni by species-specific PCR and 16S rRNA sequencing. Single-enzyme amplified fragment length polymorphism (SE-AFLP) analysis showed that all strains could be typed under these conditions, and three main groups were determined by cluster analysis, which showed intraspecific homology higher than 69 %. Eight strains, representative of SE-AFLP clusters, were tested for malolactic activity. Significant differences were observed among strains with regard to the amount of malic acid consumed. Seventeen amino acids in different wines that were inoculated by 4 O. oeni strains, respectively, were analyzed before and after MLF. The results indicated that the amino acid metabolism of the 4 strains was significantly different between each strain.