Our Story

… a collaboration between the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology (CoESB) and the Bacterial Regulation and Transport Laboratory (BRaTlab). It’s based around a citizen science project with a twist: asking participants to gather wild yeast from native flora, so we can refine and genotype, build a zoo, then use it!

Wild Yeast Zoo is supported by Inspiring Australia through the Inspiring Qld and Inspiring NSW state networks. See our Partners page for a full list of our collaborators!

Over time, this project will be expanded on the basis of a citizen science project. We will create probe kits to send out to participants who will gather samples and mail them to us, along with the story of the flora, its location and significance. We hope over time to build a ‘zoo’ of these yeasts -- a database that can be purchased from and used for a range of commercial applications.

We are a transdisciplinary team from two Australian universities with pilot funding from the CoESB to discover native wild yeasts whilst ensuring we acknowledge the IP of first nations peoples.