Tag Archives: yeast

Originally published January 24, 2014 by the US National Library of Medicine Circulating Now welcomes guest bloggers Diane Wendt and Mallory Warner from the Division of Medicine and Science at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. As curators of our most recent exhibition, From DNA to Beer: Harnessing Nature in Medicine and Industry, Diane and Mallory spent months researching …

…it was in 1857 that Louis Pasteur discovered that yeast generated carbon dioxide as a product of fermentation and it is, of course, the presence of this gas trapped in bubbles by the elastic strands of the protein gluten that causes the bread to rise. Read the full article…

It took scientists such as Louis Pasteur to take yeast from the metaphysical realm into something that we can now understand and manipulate. There are two basic styles of brewer’s yeast: ale and lager. Ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae – “sugar fungus ale”) works at warm temperatures (15-25C) in the brewery and forms a vast blanket of froth on top of …

Single-celled yeast organisms were first used in baking and fermentation 4,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. Centuries later, famed French microbiologist Louis Pasteur discovered that alcohol was the natural by-product of yeast fermentation. Read the full article…