yeast

Scientists have discovered a new species of yeast in the guts of mice and humans that could have remarkable health benefits.Named Kazachstania weizmannii by researchers from Israel and Germany, the new species appears to fight off another yeast called Candida albicans, which has the potential to spread into a dangerous fungal infection. C. albicans lives on many people's skin and mucous membranes without much bother, though overgrowth can cause the irritating condition candidiasis (commonly called thrush). Under some…

Scientists discovered that using Torulaspora delbrueckii yeast in carbonic maceration wines significantly enhances their color, aroma, and overall quality, while also accelerating the fermentation process. This breakthrough provides winemakers with a valuable tool to differentiate their products in a highly competitive industry.A study conducted by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili has discovered that a specific yeast can accelerate the winemaking process and enhance the organoleptic properties of wines.The market is…

Green rhodopsin proteins inside the blue cell walls help these yeast grow faster when exposed to light. Credit: Anthony Burnetti, Georgia Institute of TechnologyYeast is often known for its ability to ferment carbohydrates into products such as bread and beer, typically requiring a dark environment. Exposure to light in these situations can disrupt or spoil the fermentation process.However, a recent study published in Current Biology by researchers from the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech presents a…

Scientists have given yeast a brand new ability – gaining energy from light. The technique was remarkably easy, the team says, and could not only help us understand evolution but make better beer and biofuel.As any amateur brewer or baker will tell you, yeast is very sensitive to light. Exposure will kill it off, leaving your bread or beer flat. The stuff grows and works best in total darkness and under careful temperature control, but in a new study, scientists at Georgia Tech have engineered yeast to not only survive…

A climbing vine known as the “Seven Steps of Death” holds within its toxic growth something scientists believe to be a powerful anti-obesity compound, celastrol. For the first time, this hotly touted compound has been produced simply and safely, using normal yeast as an ideal ‘surrogate' host.The plant, better known as the thunder god vine (Tripterygium wilfordii), grows predominantly in China and has long been used in traditional medicine to treat rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, lupus,…

A new study indicates that two yeasts used in food production, Cyberlindnera jadinii and Kluyveromyces lactis, might have probiotic properties beneficial for gut inflammation, pointing to potential new treatments for inflammatory bowel diseases. The food industry has long utilized various fungal strains for their fermentation, flavor production, and ability to produce heterologous molecules. A recent study highlights the potential probiotic effects of two fungi, commonly used in food production, on gut inflammation. The…

Scientists have come one step closer to creating a synthetic yeast. For more than 15 years, researchers have worked tirelessly to build a complex cell with an entire genome from the ground up. And now they’ve hit a major milestone by managing to combine artificial versions of some of the 16 chromosomes in a single yeast cell successfully. This feat is especially exciting because it reveals more information about the foundational processes within cells. It’s also a major step forward for the vision that some…

Scientists have hit a major milestone in a 15-year project trying to build a completely synthetic yeast genome. Reporting in a bumper crop of new papers, the team has engineered viable yeast cells with more than 50% synthetic DNA for the first time, and have created synthetic versions of almost all its chromosomes, plus a completely new one.The world’s first completely synthetic organism was created in 2010, and has been tweaked in the years since to let it grow and divide, and even move around on its own. But this, and…

While the startup cofounders considered hoppy-tasting but hop-free beer potentially beneficial to brewers and the environment—as Denby said in a New York Times story after the paper was published—some hop farmers felt threatened. They feared engineered yeast could end a farming tradition and hollow out the soul of brewing, a dance of microorganisms, farmers, brewers, and hops stretching back to the 11th century.Denby declines to talk on the record about the antagonism, which caught the company by surprise, but news of the…

Scientists are conducting a long-term experiment on evolution in the lab, to investigate how single-celled organisms could evolve into multicellular lifeforms. After thousands of generations, their yeast grew 20,000 times bigger and 10,000 times tougher.The idea of an evolutionary “missing link” usually conjures images of a hairy ape-like hominid, but there are actually much more profound missing links in the chain. One of the biggest gaps sits between single-celled and multicellular organisms, which marks a key step in…