Effects of Glucose on Saccharomyces cerevisiae in Rising Temperatures

Abstract

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as baker’s yeast, is a eukaryotic unicellular organism in the Fungi Kingdom. Through the process of fermentation, S. cerevisiae increase metabolic rates in relation to ambient temperatures. Our hypothesis being that as water temperatures rise, fermentation rates, measured by ethanol production, will also increase, but cell growth will rise more significantly during the second trial because the ideal temperature for the cell growth of yeast is between 32 and 35° C. Rising water temperatures place stress on S. cerevisiae, thus varying temperatures activate or deactivate the ability of the enzymes to perform (Chirino 2016). Our group created this experiment to measure ethanol production due to fermentation rates, and yeast cell growth to ensure our ethanol change is due to increased production and not growth in sample size. This effects the level of ethanol production since ethanol is the byproduct of fermentation, an anaerobic respiration process (Hoefnagels 2011). We found that ethanol production increased as temperature increased, and cell growth increased to a certain point before decreasing, which supported our original hypothesis. From our results, we were able to conclude that both temperature and cell growth positively affect ethanol production in yeast.