Abstract
The fermentation industry is known to be very conservative, relying on traditional yeast management. Yet, in the modern fast-paced world, change comes about in facets such as climate change altering the quality and quantity of harvests, changes due to government regulations e.g., the use of pesticides or SO2, the need to become more sustainable, and of course by changes in consumer preferences. As a silent companion of the fermentation industry, the wine yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has followed mankind through millennia, changing from a Kulturfolger, into a domesticated species for the production of bread, beer, and wine and further on into a platform strain for the production of biofuels, enzymes, flavors, or pharmaceuticals. This success story is based on the ‘awesome power of yeast genetics’. Central to this is the very efficient homologous recombination (HR) machinery of S. cerevisiae that allows highly-specific genome edits. This microsurgery tool is so reliable that yeast has put a generally recognized as safe (GRAS) label onto itself and entrusted to itself the life-changing decision of mating type-switching. Later, yeast became its own genome editor, interpreted as domestication events, to adapt to harsh fermentation conditions. In biotechnology, yeast HR has been used with tremendous success over the last 40 years. Here we discuss several types of yeast genome edits then focus on HR and its inherent potential for evolving novel wine yeast strains and styles relevant for changing markets.
Highlights
Fermented beverages have followed mankind through history and the domestication of barley around 10,000 BC was an indication that alcoholic beverages were an integral part of society [1,2]
S. cerevisiae has acquired foreign DNA encoding the oligopeptide transporters FOT1-2 through horizontal gene transfer from Torulaspora microellipsoides, which enhanced wine yeast’s ability to transport oligopeptides and provided a fitness advantage in grape must [6]. These natural genome edits allowed the adaptation of wine yeasts to the harsh fermentation conditions with high sugar but low nitrogen availability and the high alcohol levels at the end of fermentation
Key advantages of genome editing over random mutagenesis and selection are the full control over the genome edits and the minimal changes introduced into the genome leaving all other genomic regions unaltered
Summary
Fermented beverages have followed mankind through history and the domestication of barley around 10,000 BC was an indication that alcoholic beverages were an integral part of society [1,2]. S. cerevisiae has acquired foreign DNA encoding the oligopeptide transporters FOT1-2 through horizontal gene transfer from Torulaspora microellipsoides, which enhanced wine yeast’s ability to transport oligopeptides and provided a fitness advantage in grape must [6] These natural genome edits allowed the adaptation of wine yeasts to the harsh fermentation conditions with high sugar but low nitrogen availability and the high alcohol levels at the end of fermentation. To achieve mating type switching yeast cells play with fire: they introduce a potentially deadly DSB and trust gene conversion via HR to fix this By doing so they gain the advantage of being able to form diploid cells that may sporulate and produce Dauerstadien under adverse environmental conditions. Arrows indicate 50 –30 orientations of the DNA strands and dashed lines represent newly- synthetized DNA
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