MITOGRESSION project was developed to understand the phenotypic and genotypic effects of mitochondrial genome inheritance in yeast cybrids and hybrids. Yeasts are responsible of bioconversion of the grape must sugars to ethanol, flavors and other compounds during wine fermentation. The wine industry is facing several challenges that push companies to innovate by searching new wine products, most of them with reduced ethanol content, due to country driving laws and the societal movement to healthy lifestyles, and new organoleptic properties.
MITOGRESSION aims seek to generate new yeast strains able to perform wine fermentations following the new necessities of the wine industry, but also to answer some basic research questions related with genome evolution and speciation.
MITOGRESSION demonstrated the implication of mitochondrial genome inheritance in adaptation to different temperatures, industrial stress tolerance, and production of compounds, which are precursors of aromatic compounds. Additionally, we demonstrated the implication of mitochondrial genome inheritance in the retention of nuclear genome, where industrial interesting traits are encoded. All these results will allow us to build new breeding pipelines for the generation of new yeasts targeting the necessities of industrial company challenges. During MITOGRESSION, we also developed a new methodology to generate new cells combining the genomes of six different species in one. The new methodology will allow studying polyploidy, genome stability, chromosome segregation, cancer and bioenergy. In conclusion, the MITOGRESSION project have generate new insights about the importance of controlling the mitochondrial genome inheritance in new interspecies hybrids to target the demands of the industry.
