Adaptability of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts to wine fermentation conditions relies on their strong ability to consume nitrogen

PLoS One. 2018 Feb 12;13(2):e0192383. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192383. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains are genetically diverse, largely as a result of human efforts to develop strains specifically adapted to various fermentation processes. These adaptive pressures from various ecological niches have generated behavioral differences among these strains, particularly in terms of their nitrogen consumption capacities. In this work, we characterize this phenotype by the specific quantity of nitrogen consumed under oenological fermentation conditions using a new approach. Indeed, unlike previous studies, our experiments were conducted in an environment containing excess nitrogen, eliminating the nitrogen limitation/starvation factor that is generally observed in fermentation processes. Using these conditions, we evaluated differences in the nitrogen consumption capacities for a set of five strains from diverse origins. The strains presented extremely different phenotypes and variations in their capacities to take up nitrogen from a wine fermentation environment. These variations reflect the differences in the nitrogen uptake capacities between wine and non-wine strains. Finally, the strains differed in their ability to adapt to the nitrogen composition of the environment, leading to variations in the cellular stress states, fermentation performances and the activity of the nitrogen sensing signaling pathway.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Validation Study

MeSH terms

  • Fermentation*
  • Genes, Fungal
  • Nitrogen / metabolism*
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae / genetics
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae / metabolism*
  • Species Specificity
  • Transcriptome
  • Wine*

Substances

  • Nitrogen

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica CONICYT FONDECYT [grant 3150159] to CB, [grant 1150522] to CM and [grant 150077] to FC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.