Crowd Sourcing SuperYeast

Climate change is bringing about huge alterations in the way we produce our food and drink. Notably, there have already been significant effects on the wine industry whereby increased temperatures result in grapes with more sugar in their juice. When yeast are added to this to make wine, the sugar acts to dehydrate them and they can die. More sugar also means more alcohol once it has been converted by yeast in a process called fermentation. The problem here is that alcohol kills yeast, for the same reason you can use alcohol wipes or hand gel to sanitise. The yeast die before all of the sugar is used up, leading to a much sweeter, less well-flavoured wine. Wineries can add additional yeast that are able to survive in the high alcohol and turn the sugar into flavour molecules, but there are few yeast able to survive in these harsh conditions. To protect the future of wine production, we need yeast that are able to survive in these stressful conditions; there are potentially thousands of relatively-uncharacterised strains throughout the UK.

We have ongoing research to generate such yeast but we want to use an approach of "Crowd Sourcing SuperYeast" where the public will donate yeast samples from beer, cider, bread, wine etc. and we will test these for their ability to survive in these harsh conditions. Participants will be provided with a swab and instructions for sampling, along with prepaid packaging to return the samples to Aston University. Our researchers will then test the strains to identify "SuperYeast". The "strongest" yeast against sugar and ethanol stresses will be ranked on a leader board available on the internet which will be updated on a weekly basis. At the end of the four month project, we will invite all participants and the general public to attend an event where we will have discussions about the science behind the project, the outcomes and allow people to test their yeast strains themselves. The participants on the leader board will all receive prizes. The idea is to get people involved in the science, gather a large number of strains for testing, and to open a dialogue about the role of yeast and other organisms in biotechnology such as food and beverage production.

Climate change results in grapes with significantly increased sugar concentrations, meaning that yeast can enter osmotic shock when initially introduced into the fermentation. In addition, the surviving yeast make more alcohol from the increased sugar concentrations but there is still sugar remaining in the fermentation at the point when they die from the ethanol toxicity. Additional, ethanol tolerant strains can be added to generate aromatics but few are capable of surviving the ethanol concentrations produced, leading to high ABV, sweet, poorly-flavoured wine. A significant part of the global food and beverage economy depends on wine production and the effects of climate change are being seen across the world in this industry.

Our H2020 ERA CoBioTech BBSRC-funded MeMBrane project works with industrial partners to produce more tolerant yeast strains, specifically focussed on the cell membrane. In this citizen science project, Crowd Sourcing SuperYeast, we will invite members of the public to submit yeast strains from day-to-day life, e.g. bread yeast or bottle conditioned beer, for analysis of tolerance to both osmotic and ethanol stresses. We will produce a weekly leader board to gamify the project with prizes for the top ten participants which will be awarded at our end-of-project event. This event will include talks from the PIs about the use of yeast in biotechnology and the research done in their laboratories to improve these processes. There will also be discussion about the project outcomes and a chance for the public to test the ability of their yeast strains to ferment sugar. The project will be evaluated with the anticipation that it will be written up for publication to share best practice. The ultimate aim is to generate strains to feed into our ongoing research, simultaneously involving the public in the research and providing an opportunity to educate people about biotechnology.

We have identified a number of key beneficiaries from this project:
1. The general public.
The key aim of this citizen science project is to involve the public in active, ongoing, real-world research. As such, we see one of the key benefits as education of the participants about both the specific activities within this project and MeMBrane and also biotechnology more widely. There is a continuing growing trend towards the use of microbes in biotechnology in pursuit of "green" solutions. However, public education does not always keep pace with this, leading to uncertainty about the processes and potentially a reluctance to adopt them. As such, we will promote responsible research and innovation and the use of alternatives to petrochemical processes as a route to mitigating climate change. This will ensure that the public are better informed to make their own decisions in this area e.g. purchasing "green" alternatives, and, in general, more aware of the scientific processes that underpin new discoveries.

2. Industrial partners.
MeMBrane has two industrial partners - Lallemand and Pakmaya who, together, produce a significant proportion of the yeast sold around the world. Our improved strains can feed into their existing pipelines of strain development with potentially large economic benefits to this sector. Even small improvements in fermentation efficiency can have dramatic effects on the economics of such processes. In addition, UK-based participant breweries and wineries will be able to liaise with Aston's Research and Knowledge Exchange team to discuss using the yeast commercially.

3. Society and the environment.
Whilst the purpose of MeMBrane is to make "greener" solutions to standard petrochemical processes, it is within the wider context of societal and environmental benefits. No matter how good a technology is, it needs public approval and adoption to be truly successful. Therefore, a synergistic effect of generating improved processes and increased education of the public in this area is required. We believe that this citizen science project will form a key step in education of the public about these issues and, ultimately, help to bring about positive societal and environmental change.