Potential nutritional and functional matters in yeast culture prepared by soybean meal fermentation

Abstract BACKGROUND Yeast culture (YC) is a product fermented on a specific medium, which is a type of postbiotic of anaerobic solid‐state fermentation. Although YC has positive effects on the animal growth and health, it contains a variety of beneficial metabolites as dark matter, which have not been quantified. In the present study, liquid chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry is employed to identify the unknown metabolites. Following their identification, the important chemicals are quantified using HPLC‐diode array detection methods. RESULTS Non‐targeted metabolomics studies showed that 670 metabolites in total were identified in YC, of which 23 metabolites significantly increased, including organic acids, amino acids, nucleosides and purines, isoflavones, and other substances. The chemical quantitative analysis showed that the contents of succinic acid, aminobutyric acid, glutamine, purine and daidzein increased by 84.42%, 51.07%, 100%, 68.85% and 4.60%, respectively. CONCLUSION Therefore, the use of non‐targeted metabolomics combined with chemical quantitative analysis to reveal the nutritional and functional substances of YC could help to elucidate the postbiotic mechanism and provide theoretical support for the regulation of the directional accumulation of beneficial metabolites. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.