
New way to make yeast hybrids may inspire new brews, biofuels - nkurz
http://news.wisc.edu/24223
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dbcooper
A Belgian lab recently reported a method for making new lager yeast hybrids:

[http://aem.asm.org.gate1.inist.fr/content/81/23/8202](http://aem.asm.org.gate1.inist.fr/content/81/23/8202)

As described by Nature Biotech:

[http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n11/full/nbt1115-1125....](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n11/full/nbt1115-1125.html)

>One Belgian laboratory's Friday evening beer fest has ended with a paper
describing how to inject flavor into lagers by encouraging some sexual action
between yeasts. Kevin Verstrepen, Stijn Mertens and collaborators at VIB
laboratory for Systems Biology in Leuven showed with genetic studies that most
lager fermentation results from a hybrid species of two parent
yeasts—Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and S. eubayanus. Because these two species
are so different, crossing them to make more diverse lagers has been
unsuccessful. At least, so far. The researchers describe how they optimized
growing conditions to foster mating between the two yeasts, which resulted in
hundreds of new lager strains (Appl. Environ. Microbiol.,
doi:10.1128/AEM.02464-15, 25 September 2015). Of the 31 they tested in small-
scale beer fermentors, only 10 performed well in terms of fermentation speed
and flavor. Two, in particular, fermented even faster and produced novel aroma
profiles compared with commercially available lager yeasts.

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afarrell
Are there any biofuels that don't require more hydrocarbons to produce than
they replace? My impression was that because we couldn't industrially digest
cellulose and because we rely on fertilizer from the heat-intensive Haber-
Bosch process to grow most staple crops, that producing ethanol for cars
caused a net-increase in carbon emissions. Am I mistaken?

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dnautics
I have insider info that BP developed a yeast strain that was gangbusters at
digesting cellulosic feedstock into glucose, but the program got killed when
they shut down their san diego operations earlier this year.

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afarrell
Did they patent any of the work?

