Wild Patagonian yeast improve the evolutionary potential of novel interspecific hybrid strains for lager brewing.

Lager yeasts are limited to a few strains worldwide, imposing restrictions on flavour and aroma diversity and hindering our understanding of the complex evolutionary mechanisms during yeast domestication. The recent finding of diverse S. eubayanus lineages from Patagonia offers potential for generating new lager yeasts with different flavour profiles.

Natural Variation in Diauxic Shift between Patagonian Strains.

The study of natural variation can untap novel alleles with immense value for biotechnological applications. Saccharomyces eubayanus Patagonian isolates exhibit differences in the diauxic shift between glucose and maltose, representing a suitable model to study their natural genetic variation for novel strains for brewing. However, little is known about the genetic variants and chromatin regulators responsible for these differences.

A Saccharomyces eubayanus haploid resource for research studies.

Since its identification, Saccharomyces eubayanus has been recognized as the missing parent of the lager hybrid, S. pastorianus. This wild yeast has never been isolated from fermentation environments, thus representing an interesting candidate for evolutionary, ecological and genetic studies.

The evolution, evolvability and engineering of gene regulatory DNA.

Mutations in non-coding regulatory DNA sequences can alter gene expression, organismal phenotype and fitness. Constructing complete fitness landscapes, in which DNA sequences are mapped to fitness, is a long-standing goal in biology, but has remained elusive because it is challenging to generalize reliably to vast sequence spaces. Here we build sequence-to-expression models that capture fitness landscapes and use them to decipher principles of regulatory evolution.

Biotechnological potential of Zymotis-2 bioreactor for the cultivation of filamentous fungi.

Background/aim: A new prototype of Solid-State Fermentation Bioreactor, namely "Zymotis-2 ", was developed to produce fungal spores.

Main Methods And Major Results: A fermentation process for fungal spores, and hydrolase enzymes (endo and exoglucanases, amylases) production by Trichoderma asperellum DWG3, Aspergillus niger G131 and Beauveria bassiana was scaled-up from flasks and glass Raimbault column packed with 20 g of solid substrates (dry weight) to 5 kg of solid substrate by using the new Zymotis-2 bioreactor. Fungi strains growth using a mix of vine shoots, wheat bran, and olive pomace was tested under similar experimental conditions in Zymotis-2 bioreactor, column bioreactor and flasks in a parallel fermentation system.