Expression data from yeast strain VIN13 in small and large scale alcoholic fermentations.

Transcriptomic analyses of fermenting yeast are increasingly being carried out under small scale simulated winemaking conditions. It is not known to what degree data generated from such experiments are a reflection of transcriptional processes in large-scale commercial fermentation tanks. In this experiment we set out to determine the effect of scale, or fermentation volume, on the transcriptional respone of wine yeast strains. Parallel fermentations were carried out in laboratory fermentation vials and commercial fermentation tanks using the same wine media and inoculated yeast strain. Comparative transcriptomic analyses were carried out at three time points during alcoholic fermentation. Fermentations were carried out in Chardonnay wine must in triplicate for both the lab-scale (80ml) and commercial scale (300L) fermentations. Sampling of yeast for RNA extractions were performed at day 2 of fermentation (during the exponential growth phase of the yeast cells), and again at day 5 (early stationary growth phase) and day 10 (late stationary growth phase) of fermentation.