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The oldest cheese sample in the world, hidden for centuries, was actually a kefir that has been ‘curing’ over time. This transformation has been detected by a group of researchers who now have the scientific innovation and technology necessary to have detected it. Two decades ago, when archaeologists discovered the milk product in mummies in the Chinese mummies of the Tarim basin, they still did not have it.
Now, the Chinese Academy of Sciences team has succeeded for the first time in extracting and analyzing the DNA of what is now considered the oldest cheese in the universe, which in turn rewrites the history of the origin of kefir.
The new research, published in the journal Cell, also shed light on the evolution of probiotic bacteria by recovering the DNA of microorganisms from dairy samples and confirmed that the white substances were kefir cheese. In this regard, they found that the samples contained bacterial and fungal species, including Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens and Pichia kudriavzevii, which are commonly found in modern-day kefir grains.