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Unravelling the Microbiomes in the Cheese Making Process: From Raw Milk to Mature Cheese
Report on the outcomes of research into microbial community structure of the raw milk, starter culture and the mature cheese, supported by the UCL Grand Challenges.
20 September 2019
Over the past 300 million years, milk has evolved to be an energy-dense and nutrient-dense matrix of carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and a variety of micronutrients delivering nutritional support to neonates and providing a rich environment in which many microorganisms thrive. From c. 10,000 years ago, milk and fermented dairy products have routinely featured in the diets of many populations globally.
While ancestral populations may not have understood the role or even the presence of microbes in fermenting milk into cheese, modern investigative techniques have characterized the microbiota involved in the transformation processes and in the cheeses. However, no studies have yet identified the microbes in the raw milk and compared these to those in the mature cheese. This study will be the first to determine the microbial community structure of the raw milk, starter culture and mature cheese. The results will give us a better understanding of what microbes are actually important in the cheese-making process.
A team of doctoral students at UCL has teamed up with Holker Farm Dairy, a small traditional sheep cheese producer, to study the microbial community structure of raw milk, starter culture and mature cheese through 16S rRNA sequencing, and presented their results at the UCL Microbiology Symposium on 5th April 2019.
Outputs and Impacts
The funding has enabled a wide arena of research, teaching and outreach:
- The team are currently preparing the data for academic publication.
- Catherine and Ronan were guest speakers at the Specialist Cheesemakers Association meeting in Dumfries, Scotland (June 2019) and the Science of Cheese conference in Somerset (August 2020). Catherine also spoke to a sold out venue at Pint of Science (2023) on cheese genomics based on collaborations with Martin Gott and St James Cheese.
- Catherine had written a book chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution based on her cheese work, and other chapters on lactase persistence.
- Catherine has also given departmental talks on lactase persistence selection and its relationship to cheesemaking, and seminars on her cheese work to the Anthropology department at the University of Tokyo.
- Catherine recently recorded an interview on cheese in prehistory for the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme.
- Catherine was awarded a LIDo industrial post doc at Neal's Yard Dairy which led to further applications to Marie Curie and Leverhulme to explore findings from the GCTT work.
- Catherine plans to publish work on Japanese dairying and cheesemaking in the near future.
- Download the Poster - 'Unravelling the Microbiomes in the Cheese Making Process'
Catherine reflects:
"Mostly, I want to thank GCTT for the diverse and engaging work that this funding has enabled - inspiration during the PhD, career opportunities, collaborations, research avenues and public engagement.Special thanks to Prof. Joanne Santini (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology) as it was through her contacts and encouragement that this whole project took off. She was been a terrific mentor throughout."
