Speaker: Maitreya Dunham, PhD
Chair of Genome Sciences, University of Washington
About the Seminar
Talk Title: “Taking yeast experimental evolution out of the lab and into classrooms and breweries”
Microbial experimental evolution has allowed for real time explorations of many important topics in evolution. Now paired with cheap and easy whole genome sequencing, we have been able to explore the genetics of adaptation at a level of molecular detail never before possible. I will talk about two projects where we’ve been able to apply the approaches and tools we developed to study evolution of yeast cultures in the lab, but now in classroom and industry settings. First, we have simplified our methods to allow high school students to perform experimental evolution as part of a teaching lab, with results contributing to a multi-school research project on how yeast evolve antifungal resistance. Second, we have taken advantage of a natural experiment happening in breweries, where yeast is “repitched” from one fermenter to the next. Using deep sequencing, we found chromosome rearrangements and copy number variants that repeatedly attained high frequency over yeast reuse, even across multiple breweries. We infer that these mutations are beneficial in the brewery environment and affect traits including osmolarity tolerance, flavor, and flocculation. We are hoping to build on these success stories to find new opportunities to study evolution in real time in environments beyond the lab.
Event Details
- Date: June 29, 2026
- Time: 11 a.m. to noon
- Location: Fifth and Halket Classroom