Geotrichum candidum is a hemiascomycetous yeast frequently found in the environment and foodstuffs. It is one of the main yeasts in cheese and it is widely used as adjunct culture in the maturation of cheese. Within ANR project ALIA Food Microbiomes in partnership with industry, we characterized the species the species G. candidum by a multigene phylogenetic study. MLST analysis allowed us to separate the studied strains into two groups. The first contains mainly environmental strains while the second contains only strains isolated from cheese. This suggests a specialization or a selection of a group of strains within industry. We developed a typing method by inter LTR profiles, which can provide a robust tool for an industrial monitoring of strains. The genome of G. candidum CLIB 918 = ATCC 204307 was sequenced. Preliminary analyses revealed evolutionary discontinuities among genes. 6802 genes where identified in which 315 genes have orthologs in filamentous fungi and not in yeast. This suggests that during evolution, G. candidum has retained a large number of genes which have been lost in other yeasts or has received some by horizontal gene transfer. The existence of this other yeasts also having a basal position in hemiascomycetous tree suggests that G. candidum and these other yeasts have an intermediate position during the evolutionary transition fungus to yeast. It is noteworthy that some of them are involved in the metabolism and may play a role in the adaptation of the yeast to the cheese environment.
