By Jason Stajich, on April 9th, 2008
We may have to reevaluate whether Saccharomyces cerevisiae alone is the species used to brew beer. A paper from Gonzalez et al describes results from PCR-RFLP comparison of 24 brewing strains identifies evidence for S. cerevisiae x S. kudriavzevii hybrids. Although this hybridization is not unprecedented, most seem to be related to cultivated brewing or [...]
By Jason Stajich, on February 5th, 2008
Dettman, Anderson, and Kohn recently published a paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology on reproductive experimental evolution in two Neurospora crassa populations evolved under different selective conditions. This is a great study that complements work published last year in Nature on experimental evolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae populations. Neurospora populations were evolved under high salt and low temperature and were started from either high diversity (interspecific crosses, N. crassa vs N. intermedia) or low diversity (intraspecific cross, two N. crassa isolates D143 (Louisiana, USA)and D69 (Ivory Coast)) as described in Figure 1. The experimentally evolved populations were then tested for asexual and sexual fitness (they were taken through complete meiotic cycle throughout the experiment to avoid insure there was selection on the sexual reproduction pathway.
