Dextrose and Corn Sugar: The Sweetest Coupling of Substrates with the Greatest Potential with Baker’s Yeast

Abstract

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the most popular strain of yeast used in both baking and brewing, valued for its durability and disposable biomass. Baker’s yeast contains enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of glucose to ethanol and CO_2. Dextrose, a monosaccharide, is the most commonly used substrate for this strain, due to its easily metabolized chemical makeup. However, the monosaccharide corn sugar is a less expensive alternative. We hypothesize that a combination of these two sugars will be the most effective substrate, due to dextrose being easily metabolized and corn sugar being inexpensive. We measured the CO₂ output (due to cellular respiration) of yeast groups fed a combination of the less expensive alternative corn sugar and the more effective dextrose using a mixture of 0.8 grams of substrate, 50% of which was dextrose and 50% corn sugar. We concluded that using a combination of dextrose and corn sugar would be the most effective substrate due to a similar stationary phase using a cheaper mixture, therefore our hypothesis was supported. For the better outcome of future experiments more trials should be conducted to get a larger s.