Dr. Chantle Swichkow, a postdoc in Leonid Kruglyak’s lab at UCLA, has been exploring the role of yeast in these symbiotic interactions. By applying her background in mouse genetics to yeast, she studies how yeast strain diversity impacts microbial community composition and the final organoleptic properties of wine, bread, and kombucha.

Join our conversation on the history of Saccharomyces, strain diversity in fermented food production, blue Takis, and the power of Reddit.

One way to characterize fermented foods is based on where the fermentation microbes come from: either spontaneously acquired from the environment (also known as wild fermentation), from a previous ferment (back-slopping), or from a commercial starter community. But how do we identify which microbes are involved in this process in the first place?

Paul Cotter, an Adjunct Professor at University College Cork and Head of Food Biosciences, as well as a Senior Principal Research Officer at Teagasc Food Research Centre, has spent his career addressing this question through tool development, collaborating with a global team of scientists, and exploring the diversity of the fermented food landscape.

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The microbiome of fermented foods, like any microbiome, is a multi-species microbial community and can include a rich mixture of bacteria, fungi, and yeast all in the same fermented food. The presence of a specific microbe cannot always predict the final quality, safety, or flavor of a fermented food, but studying their interactions gives a richer understanding of these community dynamics.

Ben Wolfe, an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Tufts University has been exploring these microbial ecologies. Using models such as cheese rinds, sterile baby cabbages, and kombucha, his lab investigates the origins of these fermentation community members, how they interact with each other, and how these communities can evolve and diversify over time.

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