DNA chips for yeast biotechnology. The case of wine yeasts

Abstract

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most popular model organisms. It was the first eukaryote whose genome was sequenced. Since then many functional analysis projects have tried to find the function of many genes and to understand its metabolism in a holistic way. Apart from basic science this microorganism is of great interest in several biotechnology processes, such as winemaking. Only global studies of the cell as a whole can help us to understand many of the technical problems facing winemaking. DNA chip technology is one of the most promising tools for the analysis of cell physiology. Yeast has been the model organism for the development of this technique. Many of the studies can be applied to improve our knowledge of wine strains. Nevertheless wine strains are quite different in some aspects from the laboratory reference strains so a particular study of wine strains and especially during the winemaking process is needed. During the past two years some groups have started this study and the first results have been published. We review here the current state of the knowledge of wine yeast and the capacity of DNA chip technology for its improvement.