Dana Somers, October 18
Please join the department of Biology in welcoming Dr. Dana Somers, Associate Professor of Biology and Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Program at Dickenson College, for her talk entitled, "Taming of the wild yeast: Domestication of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus" The talk will be held via Zoom on October 18, 2021 at 4pm EST. For access to the Zoom information, please contact Sarah Farris at sarah.farris@mail.wvu.eduMore on the talk:
The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is essential to the
production of various food, beverages, and biofuels, and has been
utilized by humans for thousands of years. Consequently, many
different domesticated populations of S. cerevisiae exist, including
those from wine, baking, and brewing, in which strains with
particular characteristics (e.g., increased fermentative capacity in
brewing strains and high ethanol tolerance in wine strains) have
been selected over multiple generations. Laboratory strains of S.
cerevisiae have also been subject to domestication, through
repeated selection for the ability to grow efficiently in a laboratory
environment. To understand the evolutionary dynamics of
laboratory domestication, wild strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
and Saccharomyces paradoxus have been passaged daily under
standard laboratory conditions for approximately 1000
generations. Domesticated populations exhibit changes in growth,
reduced environmental stress resistance, and loss of sporulation
efficiency as compared to original wild strains. Sequencing of
domesticated populations and wild strains is expected to identify
genomic changes driving these phenotypic changes.