Abstract

Flowers of the hop plant provide both bitterness and “hoppy” flavor to beer. Hops are, however, both a water and energy intensive crop and vary considerably in essential oil content, making it challenging to achieve a consistent hoppy taste in beer. Here, we report that brewer’s yeast can be engineered to biosynthesize aromatic monoterpene molecules that impart hoppy flavor to beer by incorporating recombinant DNA derived from yeast, mint, and basil. Whereas metabolic engineering of biosynthetic pathways is commonly enlisted to maximize product titers, tuning expression of pathway enzymes to affect target production levels of multiple commercially important metabolites without major collateral metabolic changes represents a unique challenge. By applying state-of-the-art engineering techniques and a framework to guide iterative improvement, strains are generated with target performance characteristics. Beers produced using these strains are perceived as hoppier than traditionally hopped beers by a sensory panel in a double-blind tasting.

Details

Title
Industrial brewing yeast engineered for the production of primary flavor determinants in hopped beer
Author
Denby, Charles M 1 ; Li, Rachel A 2 ; Vu, Van T 3 ; Costello, Zak 4 ; Lin, Weiyin 1 ; Chan, Leanne Jade G 5 ; Williams, Joseph 6 ; Donaldson, Bryan 7 ; Bamforth, Charles W 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Petzold, Christopher J 5 ; Scheller, Henrik V 8 ; Hector Garcia Martin 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Keasling, Jay D 9   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA 
2  Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA; Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Biological Systems and Engineering Division, Berkeley, CA, USA 
3  Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA 
4  Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Biological Systems and Engineering Division, Berkeley, CA, USA; DOE Agile BioFoundry, Emeryville, CA, USA 
5  Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Biological Systems and Engineering Division, Berkeley, CA, USA 
6  Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA 
7  Lagunitas Brewing Company, Petaluma, CA, USA 
8  Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA; Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Berkeley, CA, USA 
9  California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Biological Systems and Engineering Division, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Sustainability, Technical University of Denmark, Hellerup, Denmark 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Mar 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03293-x
ProQuest document ID
2015810454
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.