Aims: Two different strain characterization techniques, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and killer toxin sensitivity (KTS), were compared to assess their typing performance using a set of 30 certified Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains.
Methods and results: A sequential random resampling procedure was employed to subdivide the 32 descriptors in eight sets, in order to compare the differential performances of the two techniques with diverse number of characters. Results showed that RAPD performs better than killer, although the complete differentiation of the strains under study could be obtained only by combining profiles from the two techniques.
Conclusions: The combination of different typing techniques was useful when discriminating similar organisms. In such cases, the introduction of a second typing technique can be more advantageous than increasing the number of characters obtained with a single method.
Significance and impact of the study: The distribution of among-strains pairwise distances and the relative performance of the two techniques has implications for the study of biodiversity, taxonomy and microbial ecology.