Abstract
Modern industrial winemaking is based on the use of specific starters of wine strains. Commercial wine strains present several advantages over natural isolates, and it is their use that guarantees the stability and reproducibility of industrial winemaking technologies. For the highly competitive wine market with new demands for improved wine quality and wine safety, it has become increasingly critical to develop new yeast strains. In the last decades, new possibilities arose for creating upgraded wine yeasts in the laboratory, resulting in the development of strains with better fermentation abilities, able to improve the sensory quality of wines and produce wines targeted to specific consumers, considering their health and nutrition requirements. However, only two genetically modified (GM) wine yeast strains are officially registered and approved for commercial use. Compared with traditional genetic engineering methods, CRISPR/Cas9 is described as efficient, versatile, cheap, easy-to-use, and able to target multiple sites. This genetic engineering technique has been applied to Saccharomyces cerevisiae since 2013. In this review, we aimed to overview the use of CRISPR/Cas9 editing technique in wine yeasts to combine develop phenotypes able to increase flavor compounds in wine without the development of off-flavors and aiding in the creation of “safer wines.”
Highlights
Wine aroma and flavor are the major attributes determining the preferences of wine consumers [1]
We aimed to overview the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 editing technique in wine yeasts to construct wine yeast able to increase flavor/aroma compounds in wine without the development of off-flavors and dangerous compounds to human health, aiding in the creation of “safer wines.”
CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology was first applied in Saccharomyces cerevisiae in 2013, and the work was published in an article titled “Genome engineering in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using CRISPR-Cas systems” by DiCarlo et al [45]
Summary
Wine aroma and flavor are the major attributes determining the preferences of wine consumers [1]. An evolution occurred, and strains’ optimization, aiming to achieve mutants with the desired phenotype, by serial or the continuous culturing of a particular yeast for many generations under a selective pressure environment, began to be the more promising technique [12] The supremacy of this last approach concerning the optimization of wine yeast is characterized by the creation of strains with increased sulfite tolerance and glycerol accumulation [13], strains with improved resistance to acetic acid and even acetic acid consumption [14], as well as enhanced viability and antioxidant production [15], among other interesting enological traits. We aimed to overview the use of the CRISPR/Cas editing technique in wine yeasts to construct wine yeast able to increase flavor/aroma compounds in wine without the development of off-flavors and dangerous compounds to human health, aiding in the creation of “safer wines.”
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