Banu Metin

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Yıldız Technical University

The contamination of food by spoilage microorganisms and/or pathogens is a concern in the food industry. Pseudomonas species, Gram-negative, aerobic, and psychrotrophic bacteria, can develop in food products stored at low temperatures. The species causing spoilage in raw meat include Pseudomonas fragi, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Pseudomonas putida, a...

Hardaliye is a traditional beverage produced by fermenting red grapes with mustard seeds and sour cherry leaves in the Thrace region of Turkey. Few studies have been conducted that have determined the microorganisms responsible for hardaliye fermentation, and those that have are limited to lactic acid bacteria (LAB) using culture-dependent techniqu...

The emergence of resistance to antifungal drugs and fungicides challenges human health and food security worldwide. We investigated the presence of fungi on the surface of stored apples, and addressed the ecological characteristics and importance of the Candida parapsilosis and Exophiala dermatitidis species complexes from a “One Health” persp...

Penicillium roqueforti is a fungal starter culture used for the production of blue-veined cheeses, such as Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Stilton, Cabrales, and Danablue. During ripening, this species grows in the veins of the cheese, forming the emblematic blue-green color and establishing the characteristic flavor owin to its biochemical activities. P. r...

Pastirma is a traditional dry-cured meat product of Turkey, produced from whole beef or muscles of water buffalo. Studies on the microbial diversity of pastirma generally focus on the final product. In this study, we aimed to determine the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) dynamics during the pastirma production process. Samples were obtained from a comme...

Color is the first feature of foods noticed by consumers; It is one of the essential sensory properties that directly affect the acceptance of foods. Although foods have unique colors, there are losses due to external factors such as temperature, acidity, and light during processing. Today, artificial coloring agents are frequently used to preserve...

Acetic acid bacteria (AAB) are versatile organisms involved in the production of variety of fermented foods, such as vinegar and kombucha, and products of biotechnological relevance, such as bacterial cellulose. In the present study, Malatya apricot, a variety with protected designation of origin (PDO), and vinegar samples produced using various fr...

Omik teknolojiler, son yıllarda bilimsel literatürde adından sıkça söz edilen kapsamlı analizlerdir. Bunlardan bazılarına örnek olarak, bir organizmanın tüm DNAsı ve genlerinin (genom) çalışıldığı genomik, oluşturduğu tüm RNA moleküllerinin (transkriptom) çalışıldığı transkriptomik, ürettiği tüm proteinlerin (proteom) analizinin yapıldığı proteomik...

Turkish mold-ripened cheese varieties are traditionally produced by spontaneous fungal growth during the ripening process in cellars or caves. In this study, fourty strains of filamentous fungi were isolated from mold-ripened cheeses of different regions. Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequencing identified the most common species as Penicillium...

Objective: Candida parapsilosis is one of the most common species after Candida albicans among the causative factors of systemic candidosis. In Candida species, determination of the cell identity and the sexual reproduction process take place under the control of the mating type (MTLα) locus. This region has completely different sequences in two di...

Fasulye turşusu, Karadeniz bölgesine ait geleneksel gıdalardan biridir. Bu çalışmada, literatürde yeteri kadar bilimsel bir veri bulunmayan fasulye turşusunun temel kimyasal ve mikrobiyolojik özellikleri ile ilgili bilgi edinmek amaçlanmıştır. Bu çalışmada, geleneksel yöntemler ile elde edilen 4 turşu numunesi kullanılmıştır. Turşuların yapımında T...

Filamentli bir fungus olan Penicillium roqueforti, küflü peynirlerin olgunlaştırılmasında sekonder starter olarak kullanılmaktadır. Starter kültür olarak kullanılan işletmelerde, P. roqueforti direkt olarak süt içine katılabildiği gibi, peynir pıhtısı üzerine püskürtülerek de inoküle edilmektedir. Ticari starter kültür kullanılmadığında ise ortamda...

Konya Kuflu Tulum cheese is a well-known variety of Turkish mold-ripened cheeses produced by cutting the mature Tulum cheese into pieces to allow the filamentous fungi to grow on its surface in the cool and humid atmosphere in cellars or caves. The aim of the present study was to determine the fungal flora of Kuflu cheese using 54 filamentous fungi...

Dermatophytes are ascomycetous fungi whose sexuality is greatly influenced by their ecology. Sexual reproduction is ubiquitous among soil-related geophiles and some animal-associated zoophiles. In contrast, anthropophiles are generally present as a single mating type in the population and appear to reproduce asexually. In this article, the current...

Background The sexual cycle of Candida glabrata is not known; however, genomic evidence is indicative of recombination among subpopulations and the genome harbors genes necessary for undergoing mating and meiosis, which may increase fitness. The relationship between specific mating type‐like (MTL) loci and antifungal susceptibility is not well unde...

Sexual reproduction among the black yeasts is generally limited to environmental saprobic species and is rarely observed among opportunists in humans. To date, a complete sexual cycle has not been observed in Exophiala dermatitidis. In this study, we aimed to gain insight into the reproductive mode of E. dermatitidis by characterizing its mating ty...

Filamentous fungi play important roles in the production of a variety of cheeses. The most famous are the blue cheeses, such as Roquefort or Gorgonzola, in which Penicillium roqueforti is the principal mold, and the moldy soft cheeses, such as Camembert or Brie, in which production involves Penicillium camemberti. There are also other filamentous f...

The effect of varying levels of cadmium and correlated changes on the expression level of a type 1 metallothionein gene (dMT) were investigated in Triticum durum cv. Balçalı-85. Increasing the cadmium concentration resulted in a decrease in the dry weights of roots and shoots, and the effect was stronger in roots. Roots also showed a higher capacit...

MOLECULAR DETERMINATION OF THE FILAMENTOUS FUNGAL FLORA OF THE YAYLA CHEESE OF RİZE-ARDEŞEN REGION OF TURKEY Banu METİN1, Esra Yıldırım1, Havva BALCAN1 1 Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Department of Food Engineering, İstanbul, Turkey Yayla cheese of the Rize-Ardeşen region highlands is one local type of more than 100 reported cheeses of Turk...

Dermatophytes include fungal species that infect humans, as well as those which also infect other animals or only grow in the environment. The dermatophyte speciesTrichophyton rubrumis a frequent cause of skin infection in immunocompetent individuals. While members of theT. rubrumspecies complex have been further categorized based on various morpho...

Dermatophytes include fungal species that infect humans, as well as those which also infect other animals or only grow in the environment. The dermatophyte species Trichophyton rubrum is a frequent cause of skin infection in immunocompetent individuals. While members of the T. rubrum species complex have been further categorized based on various mo...

Reference isolates of Candida parapsilosis (n = 8), Candida metapsilosis (n = 6), Candida orthopsilosis (n = 7), and Lodderomyces elongisporus (n = 11) were analyzed to gain insight into their pathobiology and virulence mechanisms. Initial evaluation using BBL Chromagar Candida medium misidentified L. elongisporus isolates as C. albicans. Polymeras...

Isolates used in this study. (DOC)

The survival data for Galleria larvae infected with different fungal species. (XLSX)

Primers used in this study. (DOCX)

Sexual reproduction is a rich source of genetic variation and commonly observed among fungi. Basically two different modes of sexual reproduction are observed in fungi, namely heterothallism where two compatible mating types are required to undergo mating and homothallism in which the organism is self-fertile. The genomic region governing the proce...

Kwoniella heveanensis, recently published in an electronic journal and without a designated holotype, is validated as the name of the newly discovered teleomorph of Cryptococcus heveanensis.

The Cryptococcus mating-type locus (MAT) locus has emerged as an exemplary model to elucidate general principles governing the assembly and function of gene clusters. Moreover, comparative genomic studies of the evolutionary trajectory of MAT in the pathogenic Cryptococcus species complex mirror evolutionary steps that have been hypothesized to hav...

Eight BCC isolates are confirmed to be C. heveanensis, while the strains CBS 9459 and CBS 6097 are closely related but different species. Eight isolates obtained from BCC have identical D1/D2 sequence as the C. heveanensis type strain CBS 569, while there are two differences between CBS 569 and CBS 9459, and three differences between CBS 569 and CB...

C. heveanensis isolates are haploid based on FACS analysis. The type strain CBS 569 and eight BCC isolates were found to be haploid based on FACS analysis conducted with the haploid control C. neoformans JEC20 and the diploid control C. neoformans XL442. (0.24 MB PDF)

Sequence alignment of homeodomain proteins. (A) Sxi1, and (B) Sxi2 sequence alignments. Purple boxes indicate the alpha helical regions at the N-terminal region of the proteins. Blue box shows the homeodomain region and green boxes indicate the predicted nuclear localization signals. (2.26 MB PDF)

Percent sequence identity plots of the homeodomain region. An extended version of Figure 5B including percent sequence identity plots comparing an ∼12 kb homeodomain region from (A) BCC 8313, (B) BCC 8384, (C) BCC 8398, (D) BCC 11754, (E) BCC 11757, (F) BCC 15000 with the corresponding region from other isolates. The aligned regions are shown in gr...

Phylogenetic analysis of selected mating type genes. An extended version of Figure 8. (A) Species-specific profile exhibited by CID1, GEF1, and LPD1, (B) mating type-specific pattern exhibited by BSP1, SPO14, ETF1, STE20 and STE11 from C. gattii and C. neoformans, but not from C. heveanensis or T. mesenterica, (C) mating type-specific profile demon...

JGI annotation IDs for T. mesenterica genes presented in Figure 3. (0.02 MB PDF)

Primer sequences. (0.06 MB XLS)

Mating in basidiomycetous fungi is often controlled by two unlinked, multiallelic loci encoding homeodomain transcription factors or pheromones/pheromone receptors. In contrast to this tetrapolar organization, Cryptococcus neoformans/Cryptococcus gattii have a bipolar mating system, and a single biallelic locus governs sexual reproduction. The C. n...

Sexual reproduction in fungi is governed by a specialized genomic region, the mating type (MAT) locus, whose gene identity, organization, and complexity are diverse. We identified the MAT locus of five dermatophyte fungal pathogens (Microsporum gypseum, Microsporum canis, Trichophyton equinum, Trichophyton rubrum, and Trichophyton tonsurans) and a...

The basidiomycetous yeasts Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii are closely related sibling species that cause respiratory and neurological disease in humans and animals. Within these two recognized species, phylogenetic analysis reveals at least six cryptic species defined as molecular types (VNI/II/B, VNIV, VGI, VGII, VGIII, and VGIV)...