Transcriptional profile analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in second fermentation

Second fermentation in a bottle supposes such specific conditions that undergo yeasts to a set of stress situations like high ethanol, low nitrogen, low pH or sub-optimal temperature. Also, yeast have to grow until 1 or 2 generations and ferment all sugar available while they resist increasing CO2 pressure produced along with fermentation. Because of this, yeast for second fermentation must be selected depending on different technological criteria such as resistance to ethanol, pressure, high flocculation capacity, and good autolytic and foaming properties. All of these stress factors appear sequentially or simultaneously, and their superposition could amplify their inhibitory effects over yeast growth. Considering all of the above, it has supposed interesting to characterize the adaptive response of commercial yeast strain EC1118 during second-fermentation experiments under oenological/industrial conditions by transcriptomic profiling. We have pointed ethanol as the most relevant environmental condition in the induction of genes involved in respiratory metabolism, oxidative stress, autophagy, vacuolar and peroxisomal function, after comparison between time-course transcriptomic analysis in alcoholic fermentation and transcriptomic profiling in second fermentation. Other examples of parallelism include overexpression of cellular homeostasis and sugar metabolism genes. Finally, this study brings out the role of low-temperature on yeast physiology during second-fermentation. S. cerevisiae EC1118 pre-adapted to ethanol cells and sucrose (20 g/L) were added to 20 L of base wine (Cavas Freixenet, Sant Sadurní D’Anoia, Spain). Complete volume was bottled with 350 mL each one. All were sealed and incubated in static conditions at 16ºC for approximately 40 days after tirage. Three samples were taken during the process for transcriptional study of the physiological adaptation of yeast cells to industrial second fermentation conditions. A sample corresponding to exponential-growth phase under unstressed conditions (in YPD at 28ºC) was used as an external reference. Three timepoints from second-fermentation were monitored and three biological replicates from each timepoint were analyzed.