The scientists among us may have already seen Susan Lindquist's recent Nature paper proposing yeast prions as a mechanism for phenotypic inheritance in yeast.
Consistent with this idea, a blurb (below) in the AWS journal highlights recent work in Linda Bisson's lab exploring the link between GAR+ and stuck fermentations. Very interesting....
http://www.americanw...012%20final.pdf
Yeast Prions And Fermentation Kinetics
Started by
D&S
, May 24 2012 07:20 AM
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#1
D&S
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Posted 24 May 2012 - 07:20 AM
#2
Tomer1
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Posted 24 May 2012 - 08:56 AM
Arent prions a complete class of organisms? (as in mad cow desease)
My advice may or may not be backed by actually personal expirience and should be treated as such. 
#3
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Posted 24 May 2012 - 09:01 AM
No. Prions are the infectious protein agents that cause those diseases. The facinating thing about them is that they are normal cellular proteins. However, when they are 'induced' to adopt a certain conformational change, they become both infectious and self-propagating.
#4
Vern_L_Equinox
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Posted 24 May 2012 - 10:27 AM
... protein agents ... they become both infectious and self-propagating.
I'm not a biology guy, but this sounds intriguing. Is this a point where there's a fine line between chemistry and life?
Larry
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"I figure I'm many years ahead of where I would have been had I not found this forum."
Beloved Wine Studio
Larkspur, Colorado
"I figure I'm many years ahead of where I would have been had I not found this forum."
#5
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Posted 24 May 2012 - 10:59 AM
I'm not a biology guy, but this sounds intriguing. Is this a point where there's a fine line between chemistry and life?
I'll leave that to the philosophers. Though I'll heap another serving of 'intriguiging' on you and let you know that prions can 'evolve'. That is, slightly different conformations have been shown to replicate faster under certain conditions than others. Furthermore, prions and not limited to disease causing agents as put forth in the Lindquist paper.
What is interesting from the winemaking perspective is that activation of the [GAR+] state in S. cerevisiae affects metabolism of carbon sources.
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