Sweet Yeast: The effect of different sugars on Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

Yeast has served has an important organism in much of food production for ages. According to Acme Brewing and Baking Company, we specifically focused on the strand of yeast known as, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and asked the question, what effects do different types of sugar have on the ethanol production of yeast? We hypothesized, if we grow yeast at a constant temperature in rice sugar, lactose and corn sugar, then the yeast growing in lactose will have the most ethanol production. We examined the difference between the three sugars by directly measuring ethanol production. We found that lactose actually had the least increase in ethanol production and the data collected did not support our hypothesis.