6A Amino Acids and Biogenic Amines 183
Recently,multiplePCR systems have been published that use different pairs of
primers to simultaneously detect lactic acid bacteria producers of histamine, tyra-
mine and putrescine, the majority wine biogenic amines (Marcobal et al. 2005b;
Constantini et al. 2006).
6A.4 Final Remarks
The characterization of amino acid composition in grape musts and wines will con-
tinue being of great interest because these compounds represent an important source
of directly assimilable nitrogen and are also precursors for the synthesis of some
compounds during the alcoholic fermentation. Other aspects, related to the modifi-
cations in the amino acid composition during malolactic fermentation will also be of
great interest for the future. In a similar way, the occurrence of biogenic amines in
fermented foods in general, and in wines in particular, has been extensively studied
in the last few years. We have seen here that the formation of biogenic amines in
wine is a complex process involving many different factors, mainly related to the
winemaking conditions in the cellars and environmental factors. This information
has allowed valuable data for control andprevention of biogenic amine accumula-
tion in winemaking. Unfortunately, the concentration of biogenic amines in wines
is still a problem for many wine cellars. It is expected, further investigation on the
mechanisms and tools (both analytical and molecular) to avoid their presence in
wines or for their successfully removingfrom wines. Oncoming research will reveal
interesting findings within this field.
AcknowledgmentsThe authors are grateful to AGL2006-04514, PET20070134 and CSD2007-
00063 Consolider Ingenio 2010 FUN-C-FOOD Projects (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci ́on) and
S-505/AGR-0153 ALIBIRD Project (Comunidad Aut ́onoma de Madrid) for their financial support
for this work.
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