Natural history of budding yeast

The microbe humans love best is yeast. For thousands of years it has provided our favourite drug, alcohol, and in return we have fed and housed it. Most of our long love affair has been conducted in the dark, but in 1875 a Danish brewer founded the Carlsberg Laboratory to apply science to the brewing industry, and since then we have pored over the inner workings of Saccharomyces in a frenzy of scientific discovery. But despite our extraordinary intimacy with this organism, mysteries remain. Where does yeast go when it is not with us? What does it feed on and what other species does it interact with? How does it travel? When and where does it have sex? Although we have focussed powerful technology on some parts of yeast biology, we’ve turned a blind eye to the rest.