And So It Begins

[vykuza]

At the university of Minnesota, researchers have been attempting to get unicellular organisms to make the "jump" to multicellular organisation. The target? Brewers yeast.

These guys have basically made starters over and over again, centrifuged out the lighter yeast and over generations, have managed to grow colonies of yeast where the originally single cell beasties clump together (permenantly) and grow that way.

Keep this up and we'll have to wrestle our yeast into the fermenter!

Article is here: New Scientist

 

[RobH]

...
Keep this up and we'll have to wrestle our yeast into the fermenter!
...

Help! Help! I fermented at too high temperature & now I have grown a Beer Monster!

 

[Bribie G]

 

[winkle]

View attachment 46646

3787 escapes again

 

[amiddler]

Nick, I was hoping the article would answer my question but it hasn't.
Why is single cell organisms colonising so important? What is there study trying to achieve?
I can't see people puting so much effort into this just for the hell of it.

Drew

 

[Bribie G]

Just for the hell of it? Damn well there goes the Voyager Missions, the search for the Quark, SETI, the Gravitational Lens Telescope .....................................

 

[vykuza]

I guess this is one of those times where they're trying to make it happen so they can see it happening. It seems like quite an important jump, and we haven't observed it yet.

It's happened in nature a number of times, otherwise there would be nothing bigger than a yeast cell on the planet. So it's interesting to see how it happens, and how easily it might happen again in the future.


Edit: typed happen a few more times

 

[Bribie G]

Yorkshire saying: appen it will, appen it waint but appen just t'same.

If they could get it to produced normal beers then it could revolutionise fermenting and would make continuous fermentation finally an economic reality. The problem with systems so far, and why they have failed, is how to keep the yeast immobilised in the pipeline so that the beer just flows along and leaves the yeast behind. I can imagine millions of the little multicellular yeast "slugs" attached to plates with the beer slowly flowing over them like water over a coral bed with the yeasties doing their thing.

 

[vykuza]