Abstract
In winemaking, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is mainly responsible for the conversion of grapes sugars intoethanol, CO2 and numerous other by-products. Among them, the central carbon metabolism accounts for amajor part in carbons fluxes and amounts of metabolites produced. Central carbon metabolism isconstituted by strongly controlled and conserved pathways due to a complex balance between cellrequirements to maintain. Despite these constraints, yeasts may show some variations in the metabolitesyields, depending on their origins. This could allow optimization of certain metabolites production. In thisstudy, we assess metabolic diversity among a set of 51 S. cerevisiae strains from various geneticbackgrounds (wine, flor, rum, West African, sake…). To approach winemaking conditions, we used asynthetic grape must as fermentation medium and measured by HPLC the main primary metabolites.Results obtained pointed out yield differences between strains and that variability is dependent on themetabolite considered. Ethanol appears as the one with the smallest variation among our set of strains,even if it’s by far the most produced. A clear negative correlation between ethanol and glycerol yields hasbeen observed, confirming glycerol synthesis as a good lever to impact ethanol yield. Some genetic groupshave been identified as linked to high production of specific metabolites, like succinate for rum strains oralpha-ketoglutarate for wine strains. This study thus helps to define the phenotypic diversity of S.cerevisiae in a wine-like context and supports the use of ways of development of new strains exploitingnatural diversity. Finally, it provides a robust comparative methodology and detailed data set usable tostudy diversity of primary metabolites production, including common commercial wine strains.