Since its domestication, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s/brewer’s yeast) has dominated fermented foods and bioeconomy due to its controllability, consistency, and ethanol tolerance. However, our focus on refining domesticated yeasts has meant that the metabolic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of wild yeasts remain largely underexplored.
In our study, we investigated the metabolic profiles of wild Australian yeast isolates through integrated metabolomics and proteomics approaches, with a particular focus on phenotypic traits in distinct phyllospheric niches such as plants, flowers, fruits, bark, and resin. High-resolution mass spectrometry and multivariate statistics identified the production and utilization of polyols as a key metabolic strategy in several environmental non-Saccharomyces yeast isolates. Follow-up time-resolved growth experiments confirmed that, unlike domesticated S. cerevisiae, these wild yeasts could grow on minimal media with pentitols (arabitol, ribitol, or xylitol) as the sole carbon source and revealed enzymes linked to this distinctive metabolic trait.
We extended our multi-omics approach to encompass the entire microbiome of the ecological sample and characterized the surrounding microbial community at the metagenomic level utilizing ITS and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Ongoing metabolomics and proteomics studies will provide insights into the composition of the flowers as a host substrate, the molecular dynamics of the microbial community, the contribution of wild yeasts, and their metabolic adaptation to the biological niche.
Our non-targeted multi-omics approach provides a deeper understanding of wild yeast biochemistry, revealing their metabolic capabilities with potential applications in biotechnology, fermented foods, flavour, and environmental conservation.