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Mark Greener looks at how yeasts have affected human health and history
Several thousands of yeast strains cause disease in humans

Yeasts helped lay our society’s foundations. For example, in the presence of oxygen, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae breaks sugar into water and carbon dioxide. Mixed with dough, the pockets of carbon dioxide mean that the bread rises during baking. Ancient Egypt bakers used yeast to raise bread around 1300–1500 BC.1

Wine-making and brewing have even more venerable histories. S. cerevisiae can grow without oxygen by breaking sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Brewing with yeast began about 7000 BC in China, 6000 BC in Iran and 3150 BC in Egypt.2

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Animals and fungi last shared a common ancestor about a billion years ago.3 Yet yeast still have much to tell biologists about human health. S. cerevisiae is, like fruit flies (Drosophila) and the bacterium Escherichia coli, a widely used model organism that helps biologists unravel the pathways inside cells that maintain health, cause disease and offer drug targets. Indeed, in 1996, S. cerevisiae became the first eukaryote (essentially cells with distinct nuclei) with a completely sequenced genome.2

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