Sugar is the Yeast of your Worries: The Effects of Different Concentrations of Sucrose on the CO2 Production of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is a very well-known and commonly used yeast. We focused on what would happen to the CO₂ production of the yeast with the addition of a certain sugar, sucrose. We infer that when there is a higher amount of sucrose added to yeast, then CO₂ production of the yeast will increase because fermentation converts sugars into carbon dioxide, so if you increase sugar, you increase carbon dioxide. To test our hypothesis we started by choosing three different concentrations of sucrose: 0.5% (0.2 g), 3.5% (1.4 g), and 5% (2 g) and tested them over an 8 minute period. We discovered, that as we increase the sucrose concentration, the less CO₂ was produced.