Deepest look yet at brewer’s yeasts reveals the diversity harnessed by humans

Thousands of years ago, as humans tamed wild animals and plants into livestock and crops, their penchant for intoxication also led them to unwittingly domesticate a hidden workhorse of civilization: yeast. Today, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the bedrock of food cultures around the world. The yeast turns flour into bread and sugary drinks into beer and wine. But recent research has revealed that S. cerevisiae does not always act alone. Scientists have found that lager, the most popular beer style, is produced by a hybrid of S. cerevisiae and its wilder cousin S. eubayanus . The hybrid found its way into German breweries hundreds of years ago and kick-started an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, in the deepest look yet at the diversity of these yeasts, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveal the dizzying complexity found in bottles of beer, wine and cider.