Portal:Food/Selected ingredient/9

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast

A yeast is any species of fungus that grows primarily in a unicellular form and reproduces via budding or fission. Yeasts are eukaryotic microorganisms that originated hundreds of millions of years ago, with at least 1,500 species currently recognized. They constitute about 1% of all described fungal species.

Some yeast species have the ability to develop multicellular characteristics by forming strings of connected budding cells known as pseudohyphae or false hyphae, or quickly evolve into a multicellular cluster with specialised cell organelle functions. Yeast sizes vary greatly, depending on species and environment, typically measuring 3–4 μm in diameter, although some yeasts can grow to 40 μm in size. Most yeasts reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by the asymmetric division process known as budding. With their single-celled growth habit, yeasts can be contrasted with molds, which grow hyphae. Fungal species that can take both forms (depending on temperature or other conditions) are called dimorphic fungi. (Full article...)

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.