" Yeast's Out of China Hypothesis " Topic

When scientists in France set out to sequence 1,000 yeast genomes, they looked at strains from all the places you might expect: beer, bread, wine. But also: sewage, termite mounds, tree bark, the infected nail of a 4-year-old Australian girl, oil-contaminated asphalt, fermenting acorn meal in North Korea, horse dung, fruit flies, human blood, seawater, a rotting banana. For five years, two geneticists—Gianni Liti, from the Université Côte d'Azur, and Joseph Schacherer, from the Université de Strasbourg—asked for samples of Saccharomyces cerevisiae from nearly everyone they met, whether doctors in French Guiana collecting human feces or Mexican tequila makers.

"It's easy to get a thousand wine strains," says Schacherer, "But that's not how we wanted to proceed." They wanted little-known wild strains of yeast that live all over the world in a great variety of environments. And they wanted these samples to see if they could confirm their suspicions about the historical origin of yeast. The results of their analysis, published in Nature, suggest that yeast came from, of all places, China.

The most telling clue is that yeast in and around China has the most genetic diversity of anywhere in the world. Liti had already suspected this, having worked with Chinese researchers who collected yeast from remote primeval forests. But the massive sequencing confirmed just how unique yeast in East Asia are: There are more differences between yeast strains from Taiwan and Hainan—both tropical islands off the coast of China—than there are between strains in the United States and Europe, separated by the entire Atlantic Ocean.

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Cheers,
Martin from Canada

P.S. I think this has nothing to do with global warming ;-)

So we can thank China for beer?
Thank you, China!

So we can thank China for beer?
Thank you, China!

Not really. We can thank China for being the "cradle" for modern day Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. People have been baking with this, and related yeasts for millenia.

For beer, it seems we have to thank the ancient Egyptians or Sumerians. But this "beer" would have been closer to an alcoholic porridge than the liquid we enjoy today (think mouldy fermenting bread). But you have to start somewhere.

By the way, the title of the article, "All of the World's Yeast Probably Originated in China" is palpably incorrect.

P.S. I think this has nothing to do with global warming ;-)

And thereby, won't have much traction on this board.

Oh-oh, like looks China may be in the running afterall.

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Porridge?

The the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians used awfully long straws to drink/eat that "porridge"!

Dan

Headlines are the death of "scientific" news.

The the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians used awfully long straws to drink/eat that "porridge"!

Yep, and probably for good reason. The mouldy bread from the bakeries were thrown in a hole nearby. Rainwater would turn this into wet mouldy porridge. Someone must have drunk the liquid coming from this mixture and noticed the wonderful effects. The straws may have been a way to drink the liquid without getting the nose too close. So goes the theory.

This probably occurred at the beginning of the advent of civilization. The carvings you see of people drinking with the long straws could be from a millennia later. By then the process was further refined. I seem to remember that among the oldest known understood writing is an inventory of many types of beer.

Remember that alcohol production occurs naturally any place you have the right yeasts, moisture and a carbohydrate source that can easily break down into fermentable sugars. People always look weird at me when I tell them that apple juice and grape juice are totally unnatural products. The presence of yeast on the skins of apples and grapes would naturally result in alcoholic cider and wine instead. Same with fermenting rice in Japan, fermenting maguey sap in Mexico, fermenting maize and cassava in South America (ever drink Chicha?), or fermenting honey everywhere.

Everyone near a source of grapes knew that as the grapes rotted, wine was produced. However, due to bread production, it seems that beer was the earliest booze made for mass production.

Our love of booze may have even predated ourselves!

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Headlines are the death of "scientific" news.

Lol. So true, John.

Taiwan a tropical island ? Not when I was there…

Taiwan a tropical island ? Not when I was there…

The southern tip is south of the Tropic of Cancer, and thus is tropical.

Ah, so it is a geographical rather than climatological
classification.

Makes sense that way. BTW, spent almost all my time
up in the NW portion of the country, never got S of
T'aijung.

Martin: "The southern tip is south of the Tropic of Cancer, and thus is tropical."

Ha! So I guess Asia and North America are "tropical" continents then? :)

Dan

Dan, good to see you got sprung. Saves me baking a cake containing the file that I use on my minis.

You are right. Just dipping past one of the Tropics shouldn't define whether a country or continent is "tropical". North America is largely temperate with the bottom half of Mexico being tropical and parts of Canada and Alaska in the frigid zone. Same with Asia.

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I don't feel like digging though boxes to get to my intro climate books, but Dan you're taking an off-hand remark way too far. However, I would be in agreement if you were to say that "parts of the Americas and Asia lie in the Tropics". But it would be an awful stretch to borrow a "one square foot" and you're in based classification.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropics

Yeast From The East-didn't Lovecraft write that?

Bowman

Thanks for that.

Dan

Bowman

Here are a few of those hilariously long ancient Sumerian and Egyptian beer straws I was talking about.

Dan
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The image on top (the one that looks like it's made of chocolate) is a few millennia earlier than the others. Those straws were surely popular. Makes me wonder why. How bad did this beer stink? Or maybe it was just the fashion?

We're not talking brettomyces, and it coming from something closer to granola bars than white sliced bread, so probably not horrible…

"Brewing Companies Replicate Sumerian Recipes

Imagine sipping on a beer knowing you were drinking the exact same brew that ancient people had been drinking five millennia ago. That is now possible thanks to a collaborative effort between archaeologists and brewing companies, who have been able to use ancient records, as well as archaeological findings in the form of traces of ingredients left in vessels, to recreate the same beer the Sumerians were drinking.

A number of companies have already succeeded in reviving ancient beers and wines from China, Egypt, Iraq and Europe. One of the latest to take their hand to the challenge was the Great Lakes Brewing Company , a craft beer maker based in Ohio, which has a particular interest in artisan beer. GLBC completed their project to revive a 5,000-year-old Sumerian beer several years ago, and even served it up in clay vessels similar to those that would have been used by the Sumerians. Although they have stated that the project was more of an educational exercise and they do not plan to sell it to the public.

"How can you be in this business and not want to know from where your forefathers came with their formulas and their technology?" said Pat Conway, a co-owner of the company.

As well as replicating the ingredients used by the Sumerians, which included coriander, cardamom, figs, dates, and pomegranates, the company also aimed to follow the same process, using only a wooden spoon and clay vessels modelled after artifacts excavated in Iraq. They successfully malted barley on the roof of the brew house and also used a bricklike "beer bread" for the active yeast. The final outcome was a beer full of bacteria, warm and slightly sour. Perhaps not to everyone's taste! "
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Thanks for that SP. Two comments:

1) I had to do a double take with Great Lakes Brewing Co. I thought they were in Toronto! I pass them on the highway when I go into the city. But that is another craft brewery called Great Lakes Brewery. GLB is one year younger than GLBC.

2) While that sounds cool, it doesn't seem like GLBC started with traditional bread, or bappir, for their beer. I wonder how close this really would be to ancient beers. At any rate, I'll still say the old beers stunk. According to GLBC:

"The final outcome was a beer full of bacteria, warm and slightly sour. Perhaps not to everyone's taste".

Now just imagine this same brew, a few weeks later, in an earthenware pot, in hot Sumer, with no refrigeration. You've got to wonder why the use of straws continued for thousands of years. I'm thinking this could be it.

I like sour beers, which do use brettomyces and even contain lactobaccilis (the bacteria that makes your milk go sour) so I'd be up to try this beer. Bring a batch to any HMGS convention and I'll meet up with you.