Diversity and adaptive evolution ofSaccharomyceswine yeast: a review

Abstract

Saccharomyces cerevisiae and related species, the main workhorses of wine fermentation, have been exposed to stressful conditions for millennia, potentially resulting in adaptive differentiation. As a result, wine yeasts have recently attracted considerable interest for studying the evolutionary effects of domestication. The widespread use of whole-genome sequencing during the last decade has provided new insights into the biodiversity, population structure, phylogeography and evolutionary history of wine yeasts. Comparisons between S. cerevisiae isolates from various origins have indicated that a variety of mechanisms, including heterozygosity, nucleotide and structural variations, introgressions, horizontal gene transfer and hybridization, contribute to the genetic and phenotypic diversity of S. cerevisiae. This review will summarize the current knowledge on the diversity and evolutionary history of wine yeasts, focusing on the domestication fingerprints identified in these strains.

A new chromosomal rearrangement improves the adaptation of wine yeasts to sulfite

“…The stresses that yeast cells encounter during wine fermentations include the elevated content of sugar in grape musts, the high ethanol concentrations achieved, the temperature of the different fermentation types, and the sulfite added as an antimicrobial and antioxidant agent (Bauer and Pretorius, 2000;Divol et al, 2012). These environmental stresses exerted for hundreds of years and thousands of generations have caused wine yeasts to evolve rapidly, shaping their genome through different genetic mechanisms (Marsit and Dequin, 2015;Guillamón and Barrio, 2017;Legras et al, 2018).…”

Dominance of wine Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains over S. kudriavzevii in industrial fermentation competitions is related to an acceleration of nutrient uptake and utilization

“…As a result of this unaware domestication, wine S. cerevisiae yeasts are better adapted to this environment than other Saccharomyces yeasts (Arroyo‐López et al ., ; Navarro‐Tapia et al ., ). This is supported by the fact that wine S. cerevisiae yeasts exhibit differential adaptive traits (Marsit and Dequin, ) and conform a genetically differentiated population (Almeida et al ., ; Legras et al ., ; Peter et al ., ).…”

“…As a result of this unaware domestication, wine S. cerevisiae yeasts are better adapted to this environment than other Saccharomyces yeasts (Arroyo-López et al, 2010;Navarro-Tapia et al, 2016). This is supported by the fact that wine S. cerevisiae yeasts exhibit differential adaptive traits (Marsit and Dequin, 2015) and conform a genetically differentiated population Legras et al, 2018;Peter et al, 2018). In the last years, several studies tried to dissect in more detail yeast competition by using bottom-up approaches based on co-culturing different strain combinations in the laboratory, mainly wine S. cerevisiae and non-Saccharomyces yeasts due to their winemaking applications.…”

Strategies for directed and adapted evolution as part of microbial strain engineering

“…As a result, adaptive and directed evolution approaches are non‐genetically modified approaches that can be applied in organisms for which there is little genetic information known. Thus, adaptive and directed evolution have an irreplaceable role in the food and beverage areas where the application of genetically modified organisms is typically undesired …”