Genomic signatures of dairy adaptation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae from traditional Yaghnob goat-cheese fermentation.

Authors

Marina Bambi, Ahmed El Goutbi, Monica Di Paola, Matilda Bellini, Benedetta Cerasuolo, Maria Angela Diroma, Paola Mattarelli, Stefano Nenciarini, Chiara Natali, Antonio Clemente Domenico Panaino, Matteo Ramazzotti, Irene Stefanini, Duccio Cavalieri

Published in

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Volume 123. Issue 34. Pages e2537942123. Aug 25, 2026. Epub Aug 10, 2026.

Abstract

The growing interest in studying Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains from previously unexplored niches is greatly expanding our understanding of this yeast's ecology and evolution. While strains involved in alcoholic fermentation are the most studied, S. cerevisiae has also been isolated from milk fermentations and their products, suggesting a potential evolutionary specialization for dairy environments. These fermentations are characterized by the predominant presence of lactose, a carbon source that S. cerevisiae cannot metabolize directly but can exploit through the enzymatic activity of co-occurring microorganisms that convert lactose into fermentable substrates, such as glucose and galactose. In this study, we analyzed S. cerevisiae strains isolated from an unexplored and remote niche: traditional goat fermented milk produced by the Yaghnob people, an ethnically and geographically partly isolated population living in the Upper Zarafshan area of the Republic of Tajikistan. Comparative analyses with published S. cerevisiae genomes positioned the Yaghnob strains at the base of the phylogenetic dairy clade. These strains revealed distinctive coding sequences and strain-specific single-nucleotide variants present in all Yaghnob strains but absent from the other 1,053 strains analyzed. Further investigation of variants in key genes involved in galactose metabolism provided insights into the genomic and protein-level evolution of Yaghnob strains, uncovering unique genomic signatures of adaptation to the dairy environment.

PMID:
42574645
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 11 Aug 2026.

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