Saccharomyces eubayanus and Saccharomyces arboricola reside in North Island native New Zealand forests. (10th December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gayevskiy, Velimir; Goddard, Matthew R.
• Is Part Of: Environmental microbiology. Volume 18:Number 4(2016:Apr.)
• Page Start: 1137
• Page End: 1147
• Publication Date: 2015-12-10
• Subjects: Microbial ecology -- Periodicals; Environmental Microbiology -- Periodicals; 579.17
• DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.13107
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1462-2912

Abstract

Summary: Saccharomyces is one of the best‐studied microbial genera, but our understanding of the global distributions and evolutionary histories of its members is relatively poor. Recent studies have altered our view of Saccharomyces ' origin, but a lack of sampling from the vast majority of the world precludes a holistic perspective. We evaluate alternate Gondwanan and Far East Asian hypotheses concerning the origin of these yeasts. Being part of Gondwana, and only colonized by humans in the last ∼1000 years, New Zealand represents a unique environment for testing these ideas. Genotyping and ribosomal sequencing of samples from North Island native forest parks identified a widespread population of Saccharomyces . Whole genome sequencing identified the presence of S . arboricola and S . eubayanus in New Zealand, which is the first report of S . arboricola outside Far East Asia, and also expands S . eubayanus ' known distribution to include the Oceanic region. Phylogenomic approaches place the S . arboricola population as significantly diverged from the only other sequenced Chinese isolate but indicate that S . eubayanus might be a recent migrant from South America. These data tend to support the Far East Asian origin of the S accharomyces, but the history of this group is still far from clear.