Baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is widely used in industrial biotechnology for the production of biofuels, chemicals, and ingredients for the food and feed industry. The production of yeast extracts from baker’s yeast herewith presents an important example. Those yeast extracts are widely being used to generate a ‘meaty’ taste and to strengthen taste in general. This plays an important role in reducing salt content in various foods, i.e. to prevent development of high blood pressure.
The biosynthesis of taste and flavour compounds in yeast presents a very interesting platform for the thorough analysis of control and regulation of secondary metabolism. Substrate and growth conditions of the yeast determine the regulation of specific metabolite formation and hence, taste and flavour ‘performance’ of the yeast extract. This project aims at understanding which yeast metabolites determine taste and flavour performance of industrial yeast extracts, how this relates to the physiology of the yeast, while taking also the processing of the yeast extract into account, and aims at unravelling the molecular control mechanisms that govern the biosynthesis of these metabolites. This is a collaborative project between the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre and the Kluyver Centre for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation.
