Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Yeast is a simple eukaryotic organism that has been domesticated by humans for ages due to its fermentation capabilities.
It is a unicellular fungal species with metabolic processes that chemically breakdown carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol. Yeast has a key role in baking, brewing, and cooking by fermenting sugars to make bread, beer, wine, and more. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the strain of yeast most commonly used to produce these fermentation products, is also the most scientifically analyzed, utilized, and metabolically engineered strain. Its genome was even the first eukaryotic organism to be fully sequenced.
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Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a model organism for metabolic engineering due to a handful of its innate qualities and abilities. Among which include, a rapid doubling time, stability as a haploid or diploid cell, homologous recombination tactics that can be used to science’s advantage, and the fact that as a eukaryotic organism it shares important homologies with humans. These reasons allow Saccharomyces cerevisiae to function as an easily exploitable cellular factory, by way of metabolic engineering.