Evidence for a Far East Asian origin of lager beer yeast.
Lager-brewing arose in 15th century Bavaria [1] and is nowadays the most popular technique for alcoholic beverage production in the world. The technique is characterized by low temperature fermentation using the domesticated yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus (synonym S. carlsbergensis). It has been clear that the lager yeast is a hybrid with one portion of its genome having originated from S. cerevisiae ale yeast [2]. However, the source of the non-ale subgenome, which endows lager yeast with cold tolerance, had been a matter of debate [3]. Recently, a Patagonian origin hypothesis of lager yeast has been proposed based on the discovery of a new cryotolerant Saccharomyces species from Patagonian native forests of Argentina [4]. This yeast, named S. eubayanus, exhibited the closest known match (99.56%) to the non-ale portion of lager yeast and, thus, was believed to be its progenitor. However, we now show that this yeast species is likely native to the Tibetan Plateau. One of the Tibetan populations of the species exhibits closer affinity with lager yeast than the Patagonian population as inferred from population genetics and genome sequence analyses. We thus provide strong evidence for a Far East Asian origin hypothesis of lager yeast, which apparently corresponds better with geography and world trade history.
State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Jian
J
Bing
State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Pei-Jie
PJ
Han
State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Wan-Qiu
WQ
Liu
State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Qi-Ming
QM
Wang
State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: baify@im.ac.cn.
Feng-Yan
FY
Bai
D001515:Beer / Q000382:microbiology*; D002681:China; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005285:Fermentation; D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D016681:Genome, Fungal; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D012440:Saccharomyces / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D018609:Tibet
D005656:Fungal Proteins