Reduced acetaldehyde production by genome shuffling of an industrial brewing yeast strain

Abstract

High levels of acetaldehyde produced by yeast during fermentation can be of concern to product quality. A novel approach, based on genome shuffling, was applied to reduce the production of acetaldehyde by industrial brewing strain YS86. Four isolates with different impacts of acetaldehyde concentration were obtained from populations generated by ultraviolet irradiation and nitrosoguanidine mutagenesis. These yeast strains were then subjected to recursive pool-wise protoplast fusion. A strain library that was likely to yield positive colonies was created by fusing the lethal protoplasts obtained from both UV irradiation and heat treatments. After two rounds of genome shuffling, a recombinant YSF2–9 strain produced less acetaldehyde than wild-type strain YS86, by 64.5 and 66.2% in laboratory and pilot plant fermentations, respectively. The shuffled yeast strain YSF2–9 was genetically stable and may have a potential application in brewing industry for managing acetaldehyde in beer. Copyright © 2017 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling.