In the last decades, there has been a growing interest from consumers in their food choices. Organic, natural, less processed, functional, and pre-probiotic products were preferred. Although, Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. boulardii is the most well-characterized probiotic yeast available on the market, improvement in probiotic function using other yeast species is an attractive future direction. In the present study, un-anthropized natural environments and spontaneous processed foods were exploited for wild yeast isolation with the goal of amplifying the knowledge of probiotic aptitudes of different yeast species. For this purpose, 179 yeast species were isolated, identified as belonging to twelve different genera, and characterized for the most important probiotic features. Findings showed interesting probiotic characteristics for some yeast strains belonging to Lachancea thermotolerans, Metschnikowia ziziphicola, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Torulaspora delbrueckii species, although these probiotic aptitudes were strictly strain-dependent. These yeast strains could be proposed for different probiotic applications, such as a valid alternative to, or in combination with, the probiotic yeast S. cerevisiae var. boulardii.
The review deals with the environmental problem caused by low or moderate nickel concentrations in soils. The main effects of this potentially toxic element on the soil biota and the most common crop species are addressed. Moreover, the paper emphasises biological remediation methods against nickel pollution in European soils. The focus is on the well-accepted phytoremediation strategy alone or in combination with other more or less innovative bioremediation approaches such as microbial bioremediation, vermiremediation and the use of amendments and sequestrants. Results acquired in real field and laboratory experiments to fight against nickel contamination are summarised and compared. The main objective was to evidence the ability of the above natural techniques to reduce the nickel concentration in contaminated sites at a not-risky level. In conclusion, the examined works agree that the efficiency of phytoremediation could be implemented with co-remediation approaches, but further studies with clear and comparable indices are strongly recommended to meet the challenges for future application at a large scale.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.