A combined meta-barcoding and shotgun metagenomic analysis of spontaneous wine fermentation

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article

Abstract

Wine is a complex beverage, comprising hundreds of metabolites produced through the action of yeasts and bacteria in fermenting grape must. Commercially, there is now a growing trend away from using wine yeast (Saccharomyces) starter cultures, toward the historic practice of uninoculated or “wild” fermentation, where the yeasts and bacteria associated with the grapes and/or winery perform the fermentation. It is the varied metabolic contributions of these numerous non-Saccharomyces species that are thought to impart complexity and desirable taste and aroma attributes to wild ferments in comparison to their inoculated counterparts. To map the microflora of spontaneous fermentation, metagenomic techniques were employed to characterize and monitor the progression of fungal species in 5 different wild fermentations. Both amplicon-based ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) phylotyping and shotgun metagenomics were used to assess community structure across different stages of fermentation. While providing a sensitive and highly accurate means of characterizing the wine microbiome, the shotgun metagenomic data also uncovered a significant overabundance bias in the ITS phylotyping abundance estimations for the common non-Saccharomyces wine yeast genus Metschnikowia. By identifying biases such as that observed for Metschnikowia, abundance measurements from future ITS phylotyping datasets can be corrected to provide more accurate species representation. Ultimately, as more shotgun metagenomic and single-strain de novo assemblies for key wine species become available, the accuracy of both ITS-amplicon and shotgun studies will greatly increase, providing a powerful methodology for deciphering the influence of the microbial community on the wine flavor and aroma.

Article activity feed

  1. Now published in GigaScience doi: 10.1093/gigascience/gix040

    Peter R. Sternes aThe Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 197, Glen Osmond, South Australia, 5064Find this author on Google ScholarFind this author on PubMedSearch for this author on this siteDanna Lee aThe Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 197, Glen Osmond, South Australia, 5064Find this author on Google ScholarFind this author on PubMedSearch for this author on this siteDariusz R. Kutyna aThe Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 197, Glen Osmond, South Australia, 5064Find this author on Google ScholarFind this author on PubMedSearch for this author on this siteAnthony R. Borneman aThe Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 197, Glen Osmond, South Australia, 5064bDepartment of Genetics and Evolution, University of Adelaide, South Australia. Australia. 5000Find this author on Google ScholarFind this author on PubMedSearch for this author on this siteORCID record for Anthony R. BornemanFor correspondence: anthony.borneman@awri.com.au

    A version of this preprint has been published in the Open Access journal GigaScience (see paper https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix040 ), where the paper and peer reviews are published openly under a CC-BY 4.0 license.

    These peer reviews were as follows:

    Reviewer 1: http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/REVIEW.100725 Reviewer 2: http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/REVIEW.100726 Reviewer 3: http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/REVIEW.100727