BIOINFORMATIC APPROACHES FOR THE GENETIC AND PHENOTYPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF A SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE WINE YEAST COLLECTION

As for many other laboratory model organisms, understanding of the ecological, evolutionary and population genetic features that shaped the biology of S. cerevisiae is underscored by a wealth of knowledge on molecular Parameters Culture medium Incubation temperature Incubation time Agitation Strain collection The strains used in this study were obtained from winemaking environments in the Vinho Verde Region in Portugall, within our previous studies related to S. cerevisiae ecology W and cellular biology, mainly obtained from a very limited number of reference laboratory strains. In the last few years, yeast researchers became more interested in identifying genomic variability between wild-type yeast strains from different ecological niches or strains that are used for different technological applications. Phenotypic variation among wine yeasts is well-known among strains and was recognized by winemakers before being appreciated by geneticists. In this context we constituted a S. cerevisiae wine yeast strain collection (350 strains, obtained from winemaking environments in Portugal) for the conservation of biodiversity, sustainable development of genetic resources and for an equitable sharing of genotypic and phenotypic data. The objective of the present study was the development of bioinformatic approaches (based on standard and not