Commercial Applications

Yeast has long been considered to be the organism of choice for the production of alcoholic beverages, bread, and a large variety of industrial products. This is based on the ease with which the metabolism of yeast can be manipulated using genetic techniques, the speed with which it can be grown to high cell yields (biomass), the ease with which this biomass can be separated from products and the knowledge that it is generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

The budding yeast S. cerevisiae and other yeast species have long been used to ferment the sugars of rice, wheat, barley, and corn to produce alcoholic beverages such as beer and wine. Yeast produce wine by fermenting sugars from grape juice (must) into ethanol. Although wine fermentation can be initiated by naturally occurring yeast present in the vineyards, many wineries choose to add a pure yeast culture to dominate and control the fermentation. The bubbles in champagne and sparkling wines are produced by a secondary fermentation, typically in the bottle, which traps the carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide produced in wine production is released as a by-product. One yeast cell can ferment approximately its own weight in glucose per hour.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae or baker’s yeast has long been used as a leavening agent in baking. Baker’s yeast ferment sugars present in dough, producing carbon dioxide and ethanol. The carbon dioxide becomes trapped in small bubbles in the dough, which causes the dough to rise. Sourdough bread is an exception, as it is not produced using baker's yeast, but is instead made with a combination of wild yeast and bacteria.

In addition to these traditional uses yeast has also been used for many other commercial applications. Vegans often use yeast as a cheese substitute and it is often used as a topping for products such as popcorn. It is being used in the petrochemical industry where it has been engineered to produce biofuels such as ethanol, and farnesene, a diesel and jet fuel precursor. It is also used in the production of lubricants and detergents. Yeast is used in the food industry for the production of food additives including colorants, antioxidants, and flavor enhancers.

Application to Human Disease and Research

Several approaches have been used to learn more about human genes once a connection between a human and yeast gene is made. In one approach, after a human disease-associated gene is discovered the sequence is compared to the sequences of all genes in the yeast genome to identify the most similar yeast gene(s). To study whether the genes are functionally related, the human gene is then expressed in a yeast stain where the yeast gene has first been inactivated by mutation. This allows researchers to determine whether or not the human gene is able to rescue viability, growth, or more specific defects associated with loss of the yeast gene, a method referred to as functional complementation. If the pathways and/or processes that a yeast gene is involved in are conserved, much can be learned about the function of the human gene based on what is already known about the related yeast gene. Once functional complementation has been established, researchers can use this system to further characterize the function of the related human gene product. Less directed approaches that often utilize high-throughput (HTP) techniques to randomly screen thousands of human genes at one time to identify gene or genes with complementing activity. Such approaches have successfully been used to identify conserved cell cycle regulators (CDC2), genes involved in cancer, and genes involved in neurodegenerative diseases.

There are many scenarios where studies can provide valuable information to researchers about the cellular pathways and/or processes a human gene is involved in when a related yeast gene is not present.

Yeast is becoming the organism of choice in studies aimed at the identification of drug targets and the mode of action of various drugs. Chemogenomics or chemical-genomics refers to the screens that use a combination of chemicals and genomics to probe drug targets and potentially identify novel drugs. Two main approaches have been used in these chemical-genomic studies. In the first, a genome-wide collection of diploid strains is constructed where one of the two identical copies of a gene is deleted, thereby lowering the levels of a particular gene product. Target genes and genes involved in the target pathway become more sensitive to the compound and are preferentially identified in this kind of screen. In a second approach, nonessential genes are systematically deleted and the collection screened with a drug to look for genes which buffer the drug target pathway. This approach is expected to identify genes required for growth in the presence of the compound. Additional approaches using overexpression screens have been used to identify genes involved in drug resistance including the potential drug target. Comparing the expression profile of yeast cells deleted for a gene to those of wild type yeast cells treated with a particular drug can also be an effective way to identify genes which may tell the researchers something about how the drug works in cells.