A defined three-member wine yeast consortium built from fluorescently labeled Saccharomyces cerevisiae VIN13, Lachancea thermotolerans IWBT Y1240, and Torulaspora delbrueckii LO544 to compare direct cell-cell contact against metabolic-only contact in a multi-membrane bioreactor. Asmus et al. 2026 cultured the yeasts in yeast nitrogen base with glucose and ammonium sulfate, either together in the same 700 mL vessel or separated by 0.1 um membranes with continuous medium exchange, and measured 12 h growth, extracellular glucose, ammonia and amino acids, and S. cerevisiae RNA-seq at 5 and 9 h.
Taxonomy
| Taxon | Ontology ID | Functional Roles | Abundance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae VIN13 — ontology label: Saccharomyces cerevisiae | NCBITaxon:4932 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
SECONDARY_FERMENTER
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N/A |
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| Lachancea thermotolerans IWBT Y1240 — ontology label: Lachancea thermotolerans | NCBITaxon:381046 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
SECONDARY_FERMENTER
|
N/A |
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| Torulaspora delbrueckii LO544 — ontology label: Torulaspora delbrueckii | NCBITaxon:4950 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
SECONDARY_FERMENTER
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N/A |
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Ecological Interactions
The graph shows only explicitly linked interaction participants. Community members without an asserted participant link are omitted; membership alone does not imply an interaction.
Direct-contact S. cerevisiae growth advantage
In the direct-contact treatment, the three yeast strains shared each YNB vessel while the membrane and recirculation system was retained. S. cerevisiae growth was favored and it established numerical dominance by the end of the 12 h observation period. This positive treatment effect does not identify a necessary contact-sensing gene or demonstrate that the same mechanism operates in every strain.
Biological Processes:
- growth (GO:0040007 · PathwayMech)
Evidence
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PMID:42176030 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"Direct cell contact favored S. cerevisiae growth"
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PMID:42176030 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"In direct contact, S. cerevisiae established rapid dominance"
Indirect-contact Torulaspora growth shift
Physical separation with shared filtered medium favored early T. delbrueckii growth while L. thermotolerans declined more than in direct contact. HYPOTHESIZED: medium-mediated suppression of L. thermotolerans by T. delbrueckii could explain the pattern. Neither a killer toxin nor a specific inhibitory metabolite was established as its cause, and indirect pairwise confirmation was still needed. No pairwise causal arrow is inferred from this comparison.
Biological Processes:
- growth (GO:0040007 · PathwayMech)
Evidence
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PMID:42176030 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"indirect (metabolic) contact favored T. delbrueckii growth at the expense of L. theromotolerans"
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PMID:42176030 - PARTIAL (IN_VITRO)"T. delbrueckii likely suppresses growth of L. thermotolerans through a medium-mediated mechanism."
Contact-dependent amino acid profile shift
Extracellular amino acid concentrations differed between direct and indirect contact fermentations after 5 h; the measured serine, glycine, valine, aspartic acid, and arginine concentrations were higher in the indirect-contact condition, with no significant difference after 9 h. The difference does not by itself demonstrate increased secretion, reduced uptake or cross-feeding; secretion, cell death and partial lysis remain possible contributors. YNB already supplied histidine, methionine and tryptophan.
Evidence
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PMID:42176030 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"Direct cell contact favored S. cerevisiae growth and resulted in significantly different amino acid profiles"
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PMID:42176030 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"serine, glycine, valine, aspartic acid, and arginine"
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PMID:42176030 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"No statistically significant differences between these conditions were observed after 9 h"
Associated Datasets
| Dataset | Type | Repository | Accession |
|---|---|---|---|
|
S. cerevisiae direct and indirect contact RNA-seq BioProject
NCBI BioProject containing SRA transcriptome reads from 16 S. cerevisiae libraries sampled from direct- and indirect-contact three-species wine yeast fermentations. |
TRANSCRIPTOMICS | NCBI_BIOPROJECT | PRJNA1380975 |
Knowledge gaps & discussions (2)
KNOWLEDGE_GAP OPEN Which yeasts, export processes, or lysis processes produced the non-supplemented amino acids and the higher 5 h extracellular amino-acid concentrations in the indirect-contact three-species wine yeast membrane-bioreactor setup?
YNB with amino acids supplied histidine, methionine, and tryptophan, but other amino acids appeared in fermentation supernatants and several were significantly higher in the indirect-contact treatment after 5 h. The article lists active secretion, species-specific cell death, and partial cell lysis as possible sources and states that further experiments are required to explain the concentration differences.
Attaches to: ecological_interactions#Contact-dependent amino acid profile shift, growth_media#YNB with amino acids, ammonium sulfate, and glucose
KNOWLEDGE_GAP OPEN Which medium-mediated process explains the indirect-contact growth shift?
The three-species treatment comparison supports contrasting growth patterns. It does not isolate a T. delbrueckii inhibitor, and the paper explicitly requires indirect pairwise confirmation. Transcriptional differences, including HXT and HPF1 responses, are not selective genetic perturbations proving the contact mechanism. The separate amino-acid-origin discussion remains open.
Attaches to: ecological_interactions#Direct-contact S. cerevisiae growth advantage, ecological_interactions#Indirect-contact Torulaspora growth shift, ecological_interactions#Contact-dependent amino acid profile shift
1 evidence item(s)
T. delbrueckii likely suppresses growth of L. thermotolerans through a medium-mediated mechanism.
External Resources
| Name | Repository | Resource ID |
|---|---|---|
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PubMed - wine yeast three-species contact consortium
PubMed record for the Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology article describing direct and indirect contact effects in a three-species wine yeast consortium. |
OTHER | PMID:42176030 |
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DOI - wine yeast three-species contact consortium
DOI landing page for the Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology article on direct cell-contact responses in a three-species wine yeast consortium. |
OTHER | doi:10.1007/s00253-026-13856-4 |
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Growth Media
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