Data from: Footprints of human migration in the population structure of wild baker’s yeast

Humans have a long history of fermenting food and beverages that led to
domestication of the wine or baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Despite their tight companionship with humans, yeast species that are
domesticated or pathogenic can also live on trees. Here we used over 300
genomes of S. cerevisiae from oaks and other trees to determine whether
tree-associated populations are genetically distinct from domesticated
lineages and estimate the timing of forest lineage divergence. We found
populations on trees are highly structured within Europe, Japan, and North
America. Approximate estimates of when forest lineages diverged out of
Asia and into North America and Europe coincide with the end of the last
ice age, the spread of agriculture, and the onset of fermentation by
humans. It appears that migration from human-associated environments to
trees is ongoing. Indeed, patterns of ancestry in the genomes of three
recent migrants from the trees of North America to Europe could be
explained by the human response to the Great French Wine Blight. Our
results suggest that human-assisted migration affects forest populations,
albeit rarely. Such migration events may even have shaped the global
distribution of S. cerevisiae. Given the potential for lasting impacts due
to yeast migration between human and natural environments, it seems
important to understand the evolution of human commensals and pathogens in
wild niches.