PLEASE DON’T BE SALTY: INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF SALT CONCENTRATION ON YEAST CO2 PRODUCTION DURING FERMENTATION

Abstract

In the absence of oxygen, microorganisms have evolved to metabolize salt through the process of fermentation. We hypothesized that a high salt concentration would result in a higher carbon dioxide production in yeast because the yeast will create more metabolites to handle the stress of additional salt. We found that the hypothesis was not supported by the results of our experiment. We found that the rate of fermentation failed to follow a trend and was inconsistent at best, first increasing with the addition of the salt solution then decreasing as the concentration increased.