# Wheat sourdoughs: a new model to link ecology and evolution

Belen Carbonetto, Elisa Michel, Yoann Robert, Johan Ramsayer, Charlotte

Urien, Judith Legrand, Delphine Sicard

► To cite this version:

Belen Carbonetto, Elisa Michel, Yoann Robert, Johan Ramsayer, Charlotte Urien, et al.. Wheat sourdoughs: a new model to link ecology and evolution. EMBO conference New Model Systems for Linking Evolution and Ecology, May 2016, EMBL Heidelberg, Germany. hal-01606190

HAL Id: hal-01606190

https://hal.science/hal-01606190

Submitted on 5 Jun 2020

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# Wheat sourdoughs: a new model to link ecology and evolution

Belen Carbonetto¹, Elisa Michel², Yoann Robert¹, Charlotte Urien, Johann Ramsayer¹,³, Judith Legrand³, Delphine Sicard¹

¹ INRA/Supagro, UMR 1083 Sciences pour l'oenologie, 34060 Montpellier

² Oniris, Laboratoire de Microbiologie Alimentaire et Industrielle, CS 82225, 44322 Nantes
Cedex 3, France

³ Univ Paris-Sud, UMR 0320/UMR8120 G'en'etique Quantitative et Evolution—Le Moulon,
Universit'e Paris-Saclay,
F-91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

We are studying wheat sourdough as a new ecosystem model for linking ecology and evolution. The sourdough consists of a mixture of flour and water that is fermented by yeasts and lactic acid bacteria (LAB). The baker can make it in a natural way by mixing floor and water in its bakehouse (natural sourdough) or on the opposite can purchase it from outside. Like in batch culture, bakers refresh natural sourdough along and between bread-making process by adding fresh flour and water. The microbial dynamic and the microbial genetic and phenotypic evolution of these semi-opened sink/source ecosystem can be studied, when including bakers in participatory research action. The species diversity of wheat sourdough has been intensively described in European artisan bakers. Most sourdough contains *S. cerevisiae* as dominant yeast species or a species belonging to the Saccharomyces most-closely related clade, *Kazachstania*. Using metabarcoding analysis (pyrosequencing and Illumina) and identification of over 1000 yeast isolated strains, we have analyzed the species composition of sourdoughs coming from 36 French bakers with diverse socio-cultural practices (farmer-bakers, artisan bakers, companies). We found that geography did not explain the sourdough species composition but bakery practices did. While companies mostly carry *S. cerevisiae* as dominant sourdough species, farmer-bakers harbor much higher species diversity with new yeast species of the *Kazachstania* clade. The analysis of the metabolic phenotype (i.e. fermentation kinetics, glucose, maltose, acetate, lactate, glycerol and ethanol consumption/production) and population size of sourdough isolated strains and type strains of six *Kazachstania* species and *Saccharomyces cerevisiae* revealed phenotypic convergence of sourdoughs strains
belonging to different yeast species. The genome of the *Kazachstania* species are
currently sequenced and annotated and will be used to identified the genes that might be
associated to the phenotypic convergence, using RNAseq analysis.