Disaccharide sugar, sucrose, results in greater CO2 production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast than monosaccharide sugar, glucose

Abstract

When fermentation occurs in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, sugar is broken down to produce products, such as carbon dioxide. A real-world application of this, winemaking, led us to believe that the type of sugar would affect the rate of production of carbon dioxide. Therefore, we hypothesized that monosaccharide sugars would initially produce carbon dioxide at a faster rate than disaccharide sugars, given that monosaccharide sugars have a lesser number of bonds needing to be broken. An experiment to test this hypothesis was then developed by measuring the carbon dioxide production rate between a monosaccharide sugar, glucose, and a disaccharide sugar, sucrose, when each were placed separately in a yeast solution. After three trials, we found that disaccharide sugars produce carbon dioxide at a faster rate than monosaccharide sugars, meaning the increased number of bonds in disaccharides results in a greater production of carbon dioxide.