Yeast engineering technologies and their applications to the food industry

ABSTRACT

Yeast is a fungus that is widely applied in the food industry to produce yeast-raised bread and fermented alcoholic beverages, sausages, and dairy products. The growth and applications of yeast strains are affected by physicochemical factors, such as temperature, pH, and osmotic pressure. Mutagenesis, protoplast fusion, hybridization, genome shuffling, and structural synthetic biotechnology can be used to improve the tolerance of yeast to these physicochemical factors and alcohol to increase their flavor and ethanol production and positively influence wine color and antioxidant properties. Engineered strains exhibit a more effective metabolic activity under polar conditions and can improve the function and quality of fermented foods. This may pave the way for increasing the utilization value of yeast.

KEYWORDS:

• Yeast
• physicochemical properties
• engineering technology
• fermentation
• food industry

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the National Engineering Laboratory for Wheat and Corn Deep Processing of China, and the Key Laboratory for Agricultural Product Deep Processing for support.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Jilin Provincial Science and Technology Department of China (20180201054NY).