Evan Gibbs from BRAT Labs
1. How did this idea come to fruition?
Well, that's a long-winded answer. I think essentially, as per usual, Ben and I were sitting in a bar drinking sour beers and wondering, how could this be all so hard? We were looking into Australian native yeasts and found that there was really no information on species within Australia. So, we started thinking maybe there's a way that we can try and have a look around ourselves for a backyard project to brew a beer in my shed. One thing led to another and we're now where we are which is bigger and better than both of us expected.
2. What role does the BRaTlab have in this project/ what part of this process takes part in the lab?
So, the BRAT lab is led by Doctor Karl Hassan and he's my supervisor. I'm a PhD candidate and our part in this is to quantify the yeast once they come into the laboratory. So, the sample kits will get sent to us and then using the miracles of science we will determine individual yeast from a plethora of different organisms and determine whether they are able to be useful for humans as well as where they sit in the genealogy of Australian yeasts.
3. What do you think is different and innovative about the Wild Yeast Zoo project?
One of the things that's difficult when bioprospecting is actually getting to the sites to do the sampling. With this being a citizen science project we’re able to reach a broad section of the geography of Australia without actually sending expensive crews of scientists out to do the sampling. I think that is probably the main thing that's going to help us to build a broad understanding of the different yeast species in Australia.
4. What makes this process more sustainable and ethical than typical beer brewing processes?
Because we're working with our industry partners that are microbreweries. They’re actually integrated into the communities and that means that they're putting jobs into the communities and often these community-based breweries are much more ethical in the way they behave, compared to the corporate large breweries.
5. Where do you see the future of this project going?
We're already starting to make inroads into other areas. I recently had a conversation where we were looking at yeasts from another continent that is yet to be characterised, and that's very exciting as far as the research side of things.
So, just the characterization of the yeast in general across the different geographies is important academic research. On top of that, when there are new species discovered, they will have new metabolisms or new metabolic pathways. These can be utilised in the synthetic biology revolution, that’s happening now, to create high-value products.
These products have previously been created using some form of fossil fuel-derived processes. So, one of the things that we would really like to look at is different types of biofuels. For example, ethanol. Everyone knows that ethanol is made by saccharomyces cerevisiae because we drink it in beer and vodka and a lot of ethanol production for cars comes from sugar cane.
There are other biofuels out there that are much more sustainable and much easier to use, one of them being butanol. The butanal metabolic pathways while characterising it aren't one that is useful at the present time in upscaling. So, one of the hopes is that we will find metabolic pathways for things like butanol, that have an easier metabolic pathway for an upscale.
