Nong flavor liquor stater metatranscriptomics

Chinese liquor is one of the world's best-known distilled spirits and is the largest spirit category by sales. The unique and traditional Chinese solid fermentation and brewing technologies have been practiced for several thousand years. The diverse and dynamic microbial communities in liquor starter are the main contributors for liquor brewing. To date, little is known about their ecological distribution and functional importance. In this study, high-throughput metatranscriptomics technology was first used to comprehensively explore the active microbial communities and key transcripts with significant functions in liquor starter during the production process.The efforts of this study were the first step in understanding the metabolism and function of the active microbial communities in liquor starter and pave the way to optimize liquor production, improve liquor quality and discover special microbes which produce valuable and novel enzymes or compounds with great potential for industrial application.