Baker’s Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Population Changes in Concentration with Added Glucose

Abstract

In the AB&B lab, we chose to test how the concentration of yeast populations would change by exposure to different volumes of pure cane sugar. Our group expected to see a higher growth rate within the tests exposed to higher amounts of sugar. In order to test our hypothesis, we conducted an experiment containing three, one week, repeated trials to provide consistency to our results. Within these weekly based trials, we allowed our test subjects that contained 1 mL of S. cerevisiae yeast sample an incubation period which had been introduced to 0.25%, 0.5%, and 1% of glucose along with 78 mL of water and 160 microliters of Sodium Phosphate buffer solution. Our experiment results showed that the 1% solution had the highest average difference of cells per 4 x 10-6 mL per day. Our results could be used by future researchers in order to maximize understanding of yeast fermentation in the exposure to different amounts of pure cane sugar for efficiency of the use of the yeast in varying products.