FLICKR, QUINN DOMBROWSKIFor thousands of years, humans have harnessed the natural metabolic activity of yeast, a microorganism that breaks down sugars into alcohol, to make beer and wine. Our taste for fermented drinks led to the domestication of certain strains of yeast, and a paper published last week (September 8) in Cell lays out some of this evolutionary history.

A team of scientists from University of Leuven, Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB), and Ghent University in Belgium sequenced the genomes of 157 strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts that are used to make beer, wine, bread, and other products on commercial scales. The team found five sublineages, with distinct phenotypes from wild yeasts, that have been cultivated for human use.

The researchers also dated the earliest cultivated yeast strains to the 1500s, which is likely a consequence of beer production in Europe moving from pubs into monasteries, where brewers began...