Heat-stress responses regulated via a MYB24-MYC2 complex

This article explores the contemporary culture of wine consumption in Ukraine through the lens of social, economic, and cultural transformations triggered by European integration, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the full-scale war since 2022.

In this work, these four red varieties were characterized in terms of phenolic composition. Thus, the anthocyanin accumulation and the extractability evolution during ripening were compared.

Variegation, a frequently observed trait in plants, is characterized by the occurrence of white or discoloured plant tissue. This phenomenon is attributed to genetic mosaicism or chimerism, potentially impacting the epidermal (L1) and subepidermal (L2) cell layers. In grapevine, variegation manifests as white or paler leaf, flower, or berry tissues, often leading to stunted growth and impeded development. Despite its prevalence, variegation in grapevines remains understudied.

Under standard wine tasting conditions, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) responsible for the wine’s bouquet progressively invade the glass headspace above the wine surface. Most of wines being complex water/ethanol mixtures (with typically 10-15 % ethanol by volume), gaseous ethanol is therefore undoubtedly the most abundant VOC in the glass headspace [1]. Yet, gaseous ethanol is known to have a multimodal influence on wine’s perception [2]. Of particular importance to flavor perception is the effect of ethanol on the release of aroma compounds into the headspace of the beverage [1].

Fermenting grape juice represents one of the oldest continuously maintained anthropogenic microbial environments and supports a well-mapped microbial ecosystem. Several yeast and bacterial species dominate this ecosystem, and some of these species are part of the globally most studied and best understood individual organisms. Detailed physiological, cellular and molecular data have been generated on these individual species and have helped elucidate complex evolutionary processes such as the domestication of wine yeast strains of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These data support the notion that the wine making environment represents an ecological niche of significant evolutionary relevance. Taken together, the data suggest that the wine fermentation ecosystem is an excellent model to study fundamental questions about the working of microbial ecosystems and on the impact of biotic selection pressures on microbial ecosystem functioning. Indeed, and although well mapped, the rules and molecular mechanisms that govern the interactions between microbial species within this, and other, ecosystems remain underexplored. Here we present data derived from several converging approaches, including microbiome data of spontaneous fermentations, the population dynamics of constructed consortia, the application of biotic selection pressures in directed laboratory evolution, and the physiological and molecular analysis of pairwise and higher order interactions between yeast species. The data reveal the importance of cell wall-related elements in interspecies interactions and in evolutionary adaptation and suggest that predictive modelling and biotechnological control of the wine ecosystem during fermentation are promising strategies for wine making in future.