Design of a new model yeast consortium for ecological studies of enological fermentation

Wine fermentation involves complex microbial communities of non-Saccharomyces yeast species besides the well-known Saccharomyces cerevisiae. While extensive research has enhanced our understanding of S. cerevisiae, the development of multi-species fermentation starters has led to increased interest in yeast interactions and the role of microbial diversity in winemaking. Consequently, molecular methods have emerged to identify the different species at different stages of the winemaking process. Model microbial communities or consortia, which provide simplified systems resembling natural microbial diversity, offer opportunities to investigate population dynamics and understand the role of community diversity in ecosystem performance. Here, this work aims to design a yeast consortium reflecting the diversity of wine yeasts and to develop a method for accurately tracking their population dynamics during fermentation. We developed and characterized a six-species consortium, with S. cerevisiae, Hanseniaspora uvarum, Starmerella bacillaris, Metschnikowia pulcherrima, Lachancea thermotolerans and Torulaspora delbrueckii. By tagging each yeast species with distinct fluorescent markers, the study enables real-time monitoring of individual species within the consortium using flow cytometry. We have carried out a complete analysis of this consortium, studying the evolution of populations over time and examining factors such as metabolite production and fermentation kinetics. In addition, the yeast consortium was used to test the diversity-function relationship as a proof of concept. We sought to determine the impact of the initial evenness on communities’ performances subjected to osmotic stress. To this end, ten randomly designed consortia with varying initial species proportions were followed in enological fermentation with 200 and 280 g/L of initial sugars.  The initial proportion of certain species affected the population dynamics and metabolite production however no demonstrable effect of the initial evenness on the response to osmotic stress was shown. These results demonstrated the usefulness of the presented consortium, which is now available to the scientific community and can contribute to future work trying to decipher multispecies dynamics and the role of yeast diversity in wine fermentation.