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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4967-1836
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Molecular and Cellular Biology
Year Degree Awarded
2029
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
John G. Gibbons
Second Advisor
Ana Caicedo
Third Advisor
Li-Jun Ma
Fourth Advisor
Jeffrey Blanchard
Subject Categories
Bioinformatics | Biology | Food Science | Genomics
Abstract
Along with the agriculture and domestication revolution, humans have utilized bacteria, yeasts, and molds for millennia in the production of traditionally fermented foods and beverages. Fermentation is a very ancient practice of high relevance nowadays since it contributes with a great variety of foods worldwide. Microbial fermentation allows metabolic transformation of the raw food materials leading to biochemical changes that played a key role in food preservation, health benefits, nutrition, flavors, and texture, among others. Food fermentation practices could diverge from traditional artisanal spontaneous fermentation to industrialize methods with specialized microbial starters and although fermented environments tend to be very stable compared to a wild environment, microbial dynamics are variable and fluctuating in terms of function diversity and abundance. Additionally, the process of backslopping, the constant transfer of previous fermented material to new batches could led to microbial specialization to human-made environment causing microbes to undergo domestication where adapted lineages are genetically differentiated from wild species. The goal of my dissertation was to understand and evaluate genomic and functional changes in fermenting food microbes and understand the impact of selection in domesticated microbes.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/33184239
Recommended Citation
"THE GENOMIC DYNAMICS OF FERMENTED FOOD MICROBES" (2023). Doctoral Dissertations. 2728.
https://doi.org/10.7275/33184239
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2728
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.