Yeast Fermenting Research Paper

Words: 898
Pages: 4

A) What does “top fermenting” and “bottom fermenting” mean? (2 pts)
Top fermenting means that the yeast cells move to the top of the liquid after alcoholic fermentation. Bottom fermenting means that the yeast cells move to the bottom of the fermenting liquid after alcoholic fermentation at low temperatures ( 1).

B) Please describe the entire metabolic process of alcoholic (or ethanol) fermentation, including the processes involved, the enzymes, the substrates and products and the energy produced. You may include diagrams here. (8 points)

Glucose is converted into Glucose-6-Phosphate through the process of phosphorylation using hexokinase and ATP to releases energy creating ADP. Glucose-6-Phosphate undergoes isomerization to convert
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Solutions containing yeasts that are presented with oxygen allows the amount of yeasts to increase while reducing the rate at which fermentation occurs. Yeasts are facultative anaerobes that can alternate between two different metabolic pathways (6)
F) Conversely, it has been found that some yeasts will sill undergo fermentation even in the presence of oxygen (called the Crabtree effect). If it is more efficient to use oxygen, why might some yeast still perform fermentation in this instance? (4 points)

Some yeast still perform fermentation in this instance because there is an abundance of fermentable sugars present in their environment and ethanol created from fermentation increases their chances of survival when other microorganism are present because ethanol may be toxic to the other microorganisms. Also, the presence of fermentable sugars such as glucose induce the Crabtree Effect, which causes the yeast to bypass the respiratory pathway and undergo fermentation ( 7).
Question 2
Much of what we know about fermentation was discovered by Louis Pasteur in the 1800’s. Until his important work, it was not known that fermentation was performed by a living organism – it was just assumed that this was a simple non-biological chemical