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Wine yeast fermentation vigor may be improved by elimination of recessive growth‐retarding alleles
Author(s) -
Ramírez Manuel,
Regodón José A.,
Pérez Francisco,
Rebollo José E.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
biotechnology and bioengineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 189
eISSN - 1097-0290
pISSN - 0006-3592
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0290(19991020)65:2<212::aid-bit12>3.0.co;2-7
Subject(s) - yeast , allele , fermentation , yeast in winemaking , wine , biology , genetics , saccharomyces cerevisiae , microbiology and biotechnology , food science , gene
The presence of recessive growth‐retarding alleles can reduce the fitness of industrial wine yeasts. In nature, these alleles are supposed to be eliminated through “genome renewal”. We emulated this process in the laboratory to increase the fermentation vigor of wine yeasts. The procedure is simply to sporulate the yeast strains and select new homozygous single‐spore descendants. Most of the yeasts achieve a faster onset of fermentation when recessive deleterious genes are eliminated. The increase of the degree of homozygosity has no relation, either direct or inverse, with the fermentation vigor of the yeasts or with the quality of the resulting wine. However, in some strains in which recessive growth‐retarding alleles have been eliminated, the fermentation vigor and the quality of the wine were found to be improved simultaneously. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biotechnol Bioeng 65: 212–218, 1999.