Saccharomyces eubayanus and Saccharomyces arboricola reside in North Island native New Zealand forests

Abstract

SummarySaccharomyces is one of the best-studied microbial genera but our understanding of the global distributions and evolutionary histories of its members is relatively poor. Recent studies have altered our view of Saccharomyces' origin, but a lack of sampling from the vast majority of the world precludes a holistic perspective. We evaluate alternate Gondwanan and Far East Asian hypotheses concerning the origin of these yeasts. Being part of Gondwana, and only colonized by humans in the last ~1,000 years, New Zealand represents a unique environment for testing these ideas. Genotyping and ribosomal sequencing of samples from North Island native forest parks identified a widespread population of Saccharomyces. Whole genome sequencing identified the presence of S. arboricola and S. eubayanus in NZ, which is the first report of S. arboricola outside Far East Asia, and also expands S. eubayanus' known distribution to include the Oceanic region. Phylogenomic approaches place the S. arboricola population as significantly diverged from the only other sequenced Chinese isolate, but indicate that S. eubayanus might be a recent migrant from South America. These data tend to support the Far East Asian origin of the Saccharomyces, but the history of this group is still far from clear.

European derivedSaccharomyces cerevisiaecolonisation of New Zealand vineyards aided by humans

“…2010; Zhang et al . 2010; Gayevskiy and Goddard 2012; Knight and Goddard 2015; Gayevskiy and Goddard 2016). Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been isolated from over 99% of spontaneous ferment samples, 10% of vineyard samples and only 1% of forest/tree samples.…”

“…2010). The single representative of S. eubayanus is also inferred to have recently arrived from South America (Gayevskiy and Goddard 2016). However, there is evidence to suggest that S. uvarum and S. arboricola may have more ancient populations in NZ (Almeida et al .…”

“…However, there is evidence to suggest that S. uvarum and S. arboricola may have more ancient populations in NZ (Almeida et al . 2015; Gayevskiy and Goddard 2016). Following Gayevskiy and Goddard (2016), alignment for all 52 NZ S. cerevisiae genomes to reference genomes for the other Saccharomyces species shows that all align best to S. cerevisiae , with an average of 97.2%, and a minimum of 93.2% (Table S3, Supporting Information).…”

“…2010; Knight and Goddard 2015), oak trees planted by European migrants (Zhang et al . 2010), and from native NZ forests and fruiting trees (Knight and Goddard 2015; Gayevskiy and Goddard 2016). While small in terms of global production, the NZ wine industry commands a strong position in the premium market and this sector is significant to the NZ economy.…”

“…2014). Another study only recently reported the presence of S. eubayanus and S. arboricola in NZ, but the age and origin of these species are uncertain (Gayevskiy and Goddard 2016). …”