date:Apr 11, 2014
yeast that blended with a distant cousin to make the lager-churning hybrid endured for almost 500 years and is emblematic of the biological black boxes that drive much of industrial fermentation, even in an age when fermentation underpins the production of everything from soy sauce to biofuel.
Now, however, scientists are beginning to color in the margins of yeast ecology and genetics, identifying new strains in new environments and using the tools of molecular biology to ferret out traits that