We isolated a new strain of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, 35a14, from banana stems in Okinawa. This strain did not belong to any industrial yeast groups in a phylogenetic tree and produced high levels of alcohol. Furthermore, awamori, an Okinawa's traditional distilled alcoholic beverage, brewed with an l-leucine overproducing mutant derived from 35a14 showed a high concentration of isoamyl acetate.
Keywords: Saccharomyces cerevisiae; awamori; banana yeast; comparative genomics; isoamyl acetate.
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry.