Over the last century, terrestrial yeasts have been widely used in various industries, such as baking, brewing, wine, bioethanol and pharmaceutical protein production. However, only little attention has been given to marine yeasts. Recent research showed that marine yeasts have several unique and promising features over the terrestrial yeasts, for example higher osmosis tolerance, higher special chemical productivity and production of industrial enzymes. These indicate that marine yeasts have great potential to be applied in various industries. This review gathers the most recent techniques used for marine yeast isolation as well as the latest applications of marine yeast in bioethanol, pharmaceutical and enzyme production fields.
Keywords: biofuel; enzyme; isolation; marine yeast; pharmaceuticals; seawater.
© 2014 The Authors FEMS Yeast Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Federation of European Microbiological Societies.