The Impact of Saccharin on Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Yeast Fermentation

Abstract

Previous research has shown that mammals struggle to metabolize sugar substitutes such as saccharin. But these results are less clear when it comes to microorganisms such as yeast. Because many animals cannot metabolize saccharin, we hypothesize that yeast growth will be less in saccharin dominate solutions as compared to glucose dominate solutions. To test this, differing solutions of glucose and saccharin were fed to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a yeast type which uses the Crabtree Effect to carry out alcoholic fermentation in the presence of glucose. Like in animals, it was found that saccharin also negatively impacts the growth of yeast meaning that saccharin could not be used in industrial processes wishing to use yeast to make ethanol.