As I was thinking about my topic for this week’s article, I thought I would do myself a little favor by first baking one of my favorite homemade desserts: white chocolate bread pudding. Not only did this help to inspire my thoughts, but perhaps even more importantly, it fed my unrelenting appetite for sweets.

The first step in preparing this delectable treat is to bake some fresh bread to be used as the base of the pudding. As many of you who have ever baked bread at home probably know, yeast is an extremely important component of this process. Serendipitously enough, later in the day when I was enjoying my bread pudding and browsing the New York Times website, I came across an article describing a new study that has discovered a newly found (and perhaps more important) use of this single-celled fungi in the natural environment.

Carlos M. Herrera and María I. Pozo at the Doñana Biological Station of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research in Seville discovered that yeast serves as an almost fungal sweater or coat for plants by keeping them warm throughout the often harsh winter season.

Previous studies have shown that pollinating bumblebees bring this yeast to the dungwort flower, however, the ways in which this benefited the plant were never sufficiently researched. Being a fungi, the yeast obviously benefits from the constant source of sugar that the plant nectar provides. Therefore, at first glance, it appeared that the relationship between yeast and the flowering plant was almost antagonistic.

The results of this study, however, show a much more symbiotic relationship; namely, by breaking down the sugar in the nectar, the yeast produces a significant amount of heat that benefits the plant. “Because H. foetidus blooms in the relative cold of winter, the heat produced in the nectar probably benefits both the plant and the pollinator,” Dr. Herrera wrote. “Among the possible advantages for the plant,” he said, “are faster growth of pollen tubes. For the bumblebees, the result is a heat “reward” that might ultimately affect winter survival.”

Discussion Question: Given your knowledge of biological interactions, do you think this is a unique or rather common relationship between the yeast and the plant? Why or why not?

News Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02obwarm.html?ref=science
Scientific Article: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1682/747