Reconstruction of the evolutionary history of Saccharomyces cerevisiae x S. kudriavzevii hybrids based on multilocus sequence analysis

PERIS D.; LOPES C.A.; ARIAS A.; BARRIO E.

PLOS ONE

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Lugar: San Francisco; Año: 2012 vol. 7 p. 1 - 14

1932-6203

In recent years, interspecific hybridization and introgression are increasingly recognized as significant events in theevolution of Saccharomyces yeasts. These mechanisms have probably been involved in the origin of novel yeast genotypesand phenotypes, which in due course were to colonize and predominate in the new fermentative environments created byhuman manipulation. The particular conditions in which hybrids arose are still unknown, as well as the number of possiblehybridization events that generated the whole set of natural hybrids described in the literature during recent years. In thisstudy, we could infer at least six different hybridization events that originated a set of 26 S. cerevisiae x S. kudriavzevii hybridsisolated from both fermentative and non-fermentative environments. Different wine S. cerevisiae strains and European S.kudriavzevii strains were probably involved in the hybridization events according to gene sequence information, as well asfrom previous data on their genome composition and ploidy. Finally, we postulate that these hybrids may have originatedafter the introduction of vine growing and winemaking practices by the Romans to the present Northern vine-growinglimits and spread during the expansion of improved viticulture and enology practices that occurred during the Late MiddleAges.