Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are of great economic importance
for the dairy and other fermented food industries. For
both basic research on LAB and their application in industrial
food fermentations, reliable and simple methods for
identification of such bacteria are required. Because many
LAB have similar nutritional and growth requirements, it is
very difficult to identify them by classical methods. Therefore,
various approaches that use molecular probes have
been described (2, 4, 11). Here we report on a combination
of sensitive techniques for identification and detection of
LAB that is based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (13)
and specific DNA probing (9).