It’s the Yeast We Could Do- The effect of sugar concentration on yeast growth rates.

Abstract

Yeast is a prominent component in many facets of everyday life- it is a naturally occurring bacteria that is utilized to make goods such as breads, alcohols, and some biofuels. Increasing the efficiency of a yeast solution can be very beneficial in the production of these products, and, although yeast production can be affected by many other factors, our experiment focused on how different concentrations of sugar (ranging from 1-5%), in the form of dextrose, affects the overall cell growth within each solution after a week’s time. We measured the pre- and post- incubation cell density of each solution using a hemocytometer to determine the growth increase for each different concentration of sugar. After running all of our trials and measurements, we found that with a higher concentration of sugar the increase in cell growth also was higher. The overall implications of our study of yeast fermentation could be used by scientists and companies in later research of particular yeast products to maximize the output and production of each, to the overall benefit of higher efficiency for their product.