The brewing industry generates $350 billion in revenue in the US annually, representing 1.9% of the gross domestic product. Spoilage is a persistent problem throughout production and distribution that causes economic loss, and is therefore meticulously avoided. Contrarily, artisanal sour beers are necessarily produced by a diverse variety of these spoilage organisms metabolically interacting in symbiosis as a microbial ecosystem. We sought to gain insight into factors driving assembly of microbial communities by testing a long-debated Darwinian hypothesis. A collection of community members were screened in co-culture and novel bioinformatics tools were developed to predict observed interactions. A fundamental understanding of these relationships is paramount to beer production and sets a precedent for the study of similar microbial communities that impact human health.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-7035 |
Date | 01 January 2017 |
Creators | Kettring, Andrew |
Publisher | STARS |
Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | text |
Format | application/pdf |
Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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