What does it knead? The effects of different levels of dextrose on Saccharomyces cerevisiae CO2 production.

Abstract

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a unicellular eukaryotic organism that is more commonly referred to as baker’s yeast. S. cerevisiae completes the process of fermentation when a sugar is added, which in turn yields CO2 and other byproducts for products such as biofuels and alcohol. We hypothesized that a higher concentration of sugar will produce more CO2, therefore it will have a higher fermentation rate. This experiment was tested by combining H2O, baker’s yeast, sodium phosphate, and dextrose in differing amounts for every trial. For our trial groups, concentrations of 1%, 2% and 4% dextrose were used. After completing 4 trials per amount of dextrose, our results indicated that the 4% dextrose group yielded the highest amount of CO2 measured at 1291.752 ppm with a fermentation rate of 2.153 ppm/sec. These findings supported our hypothesis that the larger quantity of dextrose would produce the highest fermentation rates. Research has shown that our findings were both consistent and inconsistent with other experiments.