QandAs: Food

What is Yeast?

Answer:
Yeasts are a group of single-celled, microscopic fungi.

There are roughly 1,500 species of known yeasts currently known. Like other fungi, yeasts obtain their energy through the consumption of organic compounds, not photosynthesis. Yeasts reproduce asexually, most often through budding, where a small daughter cell forms on the parent cell. After the parent’s nucleus splits to form a daughter nucleus, the daughter cell fully splits off from its parent and forms a new yeast cell.

Yeasts are commonly known for their use in preparing food. Yeast is used to aid the brewing of beer, the rising of bread, and the fermentation of wine. Yeast can also be used to convert sugar into the ethanol needed for biofuels. These processes all take advantage of the fact that, as a byproduct of their conversion of sugars into energy, yeasts produce carbon dioxide and alcohols. In beer and wine, this forms the alcohol needed in the beverage, while the carbon dioxide gas allows the bread to rise as air bubbles are formed inside of it.


	more Q&A sessions like this
	What is an Ale? What is a Lager? What are the Top Breweries in the USA? What is a Microbrewery? What is a Microbrew? What are the standard ingredients in Beer? What is Alcohol? What is a Domestic Beer? What is the Difference between Brewed Coffee and Drip Coffee? What is Wheat Beer? What is ringworm? What is candida? What Is Jock Itch? What are carbohydrates? What is a yeast infection? What is thrush? What is an Antibiotic? What is Zithromax?