FW: Missing half of lager yeast genome

 from my beer-brewing buddy Sam:

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Thought you might find this interesting:

http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Yeast-Mated-to-Give-Us-Larger-082311.aspx?et_cid=1984636&et_rid=54648820&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.laboratoryequipment.com%2fnews-Yeast-Mated-to-Give-Us-Larger-082311.aspx

In the 15th century, when Europeans first began moving people and goods across the Atlantic, a microscopic stowaway somehow made its way to the caves and monasteries of Bavaria.

The stowaway, a yeast that may have been transported from a distant shore on a piece of wood or in the stomach of a fruit fly, was destined for great things. In the dank caves and monastery cellars where 15th century brewmeisters stored their product, the newly arrived yeast fused with a distant relative, the domesticated yeast used for millennia to make leavened bread and ferment wine and ale. The resulting hybrid—representing a marriage of species as evolutionarily separated as humans and chickens—would give us lager, the clear, cold-fermented beer first brewed by 15th century Bavarians and that today is among the most popular—if not the most popular—alcoholic beverage in the world.

And while scientists and brewers have long known that the yeast that gives beer the capacity to ferment at cold temperatures was a hybrid, only one player was known: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast used to make leavened bread and ferment wine and ale. Its partner, which conferred on beer the ability to ferment in the cold, remained a puzzle, as scientists were unable to find it among the 1,000 or so species of yeast known to science.