Characteristics Of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae 3q2ot

Characteristics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Since ancient times, Saccharomyces cerevisiae – a species of yeast – has been used in many applications including the production of alcoholic beverages such as wine and beer and also in bread-making (Moyad, 2007). They are usually grown on hops. Yeasts, in general, are inactive at freezing temperatures and they grow rapidly at temperatures around 38°C. However, they cannot thrive at temperatures above 60°C. S. cerevisiae is the most widely-used yeast owing to its properties that are of great importance in many industrial processes. It can withstand stressful conditions and has a high fermentation efficiency (Reis, Bassi, da Silva, & Ceccato-Antonini, 2013). It can work even at low levels of oxygen and is not very susceptible to product inhibition in the case of ethanol production. Most strains of S. cerevisiae are acidophilic organisms but they can grow at a wide pH range from 2.58.5 (Liu, et al., 2015). These properties make S. cerevisiae an interesting microorganism to work with in the production of pharmaceutical products. With the dawn of genetic engineering in the later parts of the twentieth century, production of proteins from microorganisms has been made possible. Researchers at Genentech were able to clone the genes for human insulin and expressed them in Escherichia coli. In 1982, Genentech gave the license to Eli Lilly which led to the production of the first biopharmaceutical, the human insulin (Nielsen, 2013). In 1987, Novo Nordisk was able to produce recombinant human insulin using S. cerevisiae. Though S. cerevisiae does not produce the insulin precursor efficiently, genetic engineering made the excretion of the protein from the yeast more efficient. Kjeldsen (2000) discusses the process of modifying the yeast cell to be able to produce the insulin precursor.

References Liu, X., Jia, B., Sun, X., Ai, J., Wang, L., Wang, C., . . . Huang, W. (2015). Effect of initial pH on growth characteristics and fermentation properties of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Journal of Food Science, 00(0), M1-M9. doi:10.1111/1750-3841.12813 Moyad, M. A. (2007). Brewer's/Baker's Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and Preventive Medicine: Part I. Urologic Nursing, 27(6), 560-561. Nielsen, J. (2013). Production of biopharmaceutical proteins by yeast: Advances through metabolic engineering. Bioengineered, 4(4), 207-211. doi:10.4161/bioe.22856 Reis, V. R., Bassi, A. P., da Silva, J. C., & Ceccato-Antonini, S. R. (2013). Caracteristics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts exhibiting rough colonies pseudohyphal morphology with respect to alcoholic fermentation. Barzilian Journal of Microbiology, 44(4), 11211131.