This yeast loves light

Unlike some pretty metal plants that thrive in the darkness, yeast generally doesn’t function well in the light. This fungi turns carbohydrates into ingredients for beer or bread when left to ferment in the dark. It must be stored in dark dry places, as exposure to light can keep fermentation from happening all together. However, a group of scientists have engineered a strain of yeast that may actually work better with light that could give these fungi an evolutionary boost in a simple way. The findings are described in a study published January 12 in the journal Current Biology.

[Related: The key to tastier beer might be mutant yeast—with notes of banana.]

“We were frankly shocked by how simple it was to turn the yeast into phototrophs (organisms that can harness and use energy from light),” study co-author and Georgia Institute of Technology cellular biologist Anthony Burnetti said in a statement. “All we needed to do was move a single gene, and they grew 2 percent faster in the light than in the dark. Without any fine-tuning or careful coaxing, it just worked.”

Giving yeast such an evolutionarily important trait may help us understand how phototropism originated and how it can be used to study evolution and biofuel production, as well as how cells age. 

Give it some energy

Previous work on the evolution of multicellular life by this research group inspired the new study. In 2023, the group uncovered how a single-celled model organism called snowflake yeast could evolve multicellularity over 3,000 generations. However, one of the major limitations to their evolution experiments was a lack of energy.

“Oxygen has a hard time diffusing deep into tissues, and you get tissues without the ability to get energy as a result,” said Burnetti. “I was looking for ways to get around this oxygen-based energy limitation.”

Light is one of the ways organisms can get an energy boost without oxygen. However, from an evo