PCR and length heterogeneity (LH) analysisLength heterogeneity-PCR (LH-PCR) was used to determine themicrobial community structure of milk, NWC and cheese ecosys-tems. DNA extracted from vat milk, NWC, cheese at 48 h andDNA from the whole and lysed fractions of 2, 6, 9, 13-month oldcheeses were used for the analysis. The V1 and V2 16S rRNA generegions were amplified using the primers 63F and 355R previ-ously described by Lazzi et al.