The Yeast’s Feast: The Effect of Different Sugars on Ethanol Production

Abstract

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as Baker’s yeast, is used every day in products like baked goods, alcoholic beverages, and industrial ethanol. We were especially interested in the production of ethanol in yeast, and which type of sugar would produce more ethanol during fermentation. We applied this question to our experiment by testing sucrose, rice sugar, corn sugar, and cane sugar and collecting their ethanol production rates in S. cerevisiae. After completing the experiment, we found that they all produced a low level of ethanol, but overall, Cane sugar produced the most ethanol when in the fermentation chamber. This experiment was beneficial because we got to look at the production of ethanol in yeast when mixed with several types of sugars specifically sucrose, rice, corn, and cane sugar.