SUMMARY
Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) with different ecological niches are widely seen in fermented meat, vegetables, dairy products and cereals as well as in fermented beverages. Lactic acid bacteria are the most important group of bacteria in dairy industry due to their probiotic characteristics and fermentation agents as starter culture. In the taxonomy of the lactic acid bacteria; by means of rep-PCR, which is the analysis of repetitive sequences that are based on 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequence, it is possible to conduct structural microbial community analyses such as Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of DNA fragments of different sizes cut with enzymes, Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) polymorphic DNA amplified randomly at low temperatures and Amplified Fragment-Length Polymorphism (AFLP)-PCR of cut genomic DNA. Besides, in the recent years, non-culture-based molecular methods such as Pulse Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE), Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE), Thermal Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (TGGE), and Fluorescence In-situ Hybridization (FISH) have replaced classical methods once used for the identification of LAB. Identification of lactic acid bacteria culture independent regardless of the method will be one of the most important methods used in the future pyrosequencing as a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques. This paper reviews molecular-method based studies conducted on the identification of LAB species in dairy products.