Development of a genome-scale metabolic model for the lager hybrid yeast S. pastorianus to understand the evolution of metabolic pathways in industrial settings.

Abstract

Genome-scale metabolic models (GSMM) have been successfully applied to predict cellular behavior and design cell factories in several model organisms, but no models to date are currently available for hybrid species due to their more complex genetics and general lack of molecular data. In this study, we generated a bespoke GSMM, iSP_1513, for this industrial aneuploid hybrid Saccharomyces pastorianus, which takes into account the aneuploidy and functional redundancy from orthologous parental alleles. This model will (i) help understand the metabolic capabilities and adaptive potential of S. pastorianus (domestication processes), (ii) aid top-down predictions for strain development (industrial biotechnology), and (iii) allow predictions of evolutionary trajectories of metabolic pathways in aneuploid hybrids (evolutionary genetics).