The phylome of the wine yeast Dekkera bruxellensis' is now available. Dekkera plays an important role in the production of wine, as it can have either a positive or negative impact on taste. Also this yeast could be instrumental in the production of ethanol for fuel. These are some of the reasons why the DOE Joint Genome Institute decided to sequence this genome. We have collaborated in the evolutionary analysis of the genome which has provided some important insights. For instance, a surprising result was that Dekkera is evolutionarily very close to a group of yeasts that are poor ethanol producers and not adapted to live in fermentative environments. This shows that Dekkera and the typical wine-yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae have independently adapted to the same environment, a process known as convergent evolution. Tracing these evolutionary pathways will help us better understand what the key molecular bases of ethanol-producing yeasts are.

See more information in the genome paper.