Sixteen bacterial strains isolated from fresh water and soil of Spitsbergen (Arctic) were identificated by 16S rRNA sequencing. Thirteen strains as Pseudomonas fluorescens and as Pseudomonas syringae (six strains). The proteolytic and lipolytic activity of strains was investigated. All strains were active in proteolysis in the range from 58,5 to 139,6 U/ ml but only six strains had lipolytic activity. Strains BD1, BD5 and BD25 secreted lipases which break down Tween 80, lipase from BD22 and BD30 strains were active in the reaction with p-nitrophenol palmitate and lipase from BD3 strain was active in both tests.

The ability of eight strains of Yarrowia lipolytica yeast to produce erythritol from glycerol was investigated in ten-days flask cultures. The yeast produced 27.9–33.6 g ⋅  dm^-3 of erythritol with yield varying from 0.36 to 0.53 g ⋅  g^-1. After statistical analysis Y. lipolytica A10 strain was chosen for further investigation. The yield and kinetics of erythritol production by selected strain were examined in batch culture conducted in bioreactor. Tested strain produced 63 and 59 g ⋅  dm^-3 of erythritol with yield 0.41 and 0.37 g ⋅  g^-1 in cultures containing 150 g ⋅  dm^-3 of pure and raw glycerol, respectively. The highest volumetric productivity (0.74 g ⋅  dm^-3) and specific production rate of erythritol (0.048 g ⋅  g^-1 ⋅  h^-1) was achieved in the culture with pure glycerol. Intracellular erythritol concentration was ranging between 77.3–112.9 mg ⋅  g^-1 d.w., depending on type of glycerol used.

Recently, increased usage of methods based on DNA amplification in microbial diagnostics is observed. One of the limiting factors of these methods is the extraction of DNA. The aim of this paper was to compare three extraction methods of DNA from yeast cells of Yarrowia lipolytica, Geotrichum candidum, Rhodotorula rubra, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida famata, Candida guilliermondii and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The effectiveness of extraction method was estimated by the presence of rDNA fragment amplified with NS3 and ITS4 primers. In case of the simplest method of DNA isolation (method A) no PCR products were detected for strains of three tested species. Hoffman’s method ( method C) allowed to receive enough DNA and to obtain appropriated products in PCR for all tested isolates. In the case of G. candidum strains the positive results were obtained for thermal lysis of the cells (method B). It was confirmed that the method of DNA extraction had no influence on size of amplified region of rDNA.