Genetic Polymorphism in Wine Yeasts: Mechanisms and Methods for Its Detection

Abstract

The processes of yeast selection for using as wine fermentation starters have revealed a great phenotypic diversity both at interspecific and intraspecific level, which is explained by a corresponding genetic variation among different yeast isolates. Thus, the mechanisms involved in promoting these genetic changes are the main engine generating yeast biodiversity. Currently, an important task to understand biodiversity, population structure and evolutionary history of wine yeasts is the study of the molecular mechanisms involved in yeast adaptation to wine fermentation, and on remodeling the genomic features of wine yeast, unconsciously selected since the advent of winemaking. Moreover, the availability of rapid and simple molecular techniques that show genetic polymorphisms at species and strain levels have enabled the study of yeast diversity during wine fermentation. This review will summarize the mechanisms involved in generating genetic polymorphisms in yeasts, the molecular methods used to unveil genetic variation, and the utility of these polymorphisms to differentiate strains, populations, and species in order to infer the evolutionary history and the adaptive evolution of wine yeasts, and to identify their influence on their biotechnological and sensorial properties.

Selection of potential non-Sacharomyces probiotic yeasts from food origin by a step-by-step approach

“…3.1. Differentiation of non-Saccharomyces strains by random amplified polymorphic DNA polymerase chain reaction (RAPD-PCR) Molecular techniques have been successfully applied by several authors to identify the yeast biodiversity in diverse environments, not only for species identification, but also for strains identification (Andrighetto, Psomas, Tzanetakis, Suzzi, & Lombardi, 2000;Grando, Ubeda, & Briones, 1994;Guillamón & Barrio, 2017;Suzzi et al, 2000;Úbeda, Maldonado Gil, Chiva, Guillamón, & Briones, 2014), due to the fact that probiotic activity it is associated to strain-level.…”

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).…”

Crossbreeding of Yeasts Domesticated for Fermentation: Infertility Challenges

“…While industrial Saccharomyces hybrids inherit good fermentation performance such as growth ability at lower temperatures [69][70][71][72][73], hybridization gives rise to instability of the chromosomes, which in turn results in spore unviability [74,75]. It has been also reported that sporulation efficiency is significantly anticorrelated with the fraction of the genome associated with large (>20 kb) amplifications and deletions [76]. Aneuploidies and massive copy number variations are also seen in inter-strain hybrids of S. cerevisiae.…”