'Consider life without chocolate or good quality coffee' (see Graham Fleet and Hugh Dircks paper, ?Yeast, Cocoa Beans and Chocolate?, in this Yeast Special Edition of Microbiology Australia). And one can add to their list: wine (see papers from Sakkie Pretorius? and Vladimir Jiranek?s groups), beer (Vince Higgin?s paper) and leavened breads. All require the action of yeasts for their production, and yeasts are of enormous value as hosts for the expression and production of many proteins, including pharmaceuticals (see Ian Macreadie?s paper). Clearly, many aspects of the quality of our lives would be greatly diminished without yeasts.
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Paul J. Chambers (2007) studied this question.
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