Geographically Associated Fungus-Bacterium Interactions Contribute to the Formation of Geography-Dependent Flavor during High-Complexity Spontaneous Fermentation
Yuwei Tan, Hai Du, Hongxia Zhang, Fang Chen, Guangyuan Jin, Shuang Chen, Qun Wu, Yan Zhang, Menghui Zhang, Yan Xu
Abstract
People consume many spontaneously fermented foods and beverages with different flavors on a daily basis. One crucial and hotly discussed question is how to reproduce fermented food flavor without geographical limitations to meet diverse human demands. The constantly enriched knowledge of the microbial contribution to fermented flavor offers valuable insights into flavor biotechnological development. However, we still have a poor understanding of what factors limit the reproduction of fermented flavor outside the product's origin in high-complexity spontaneous fermentations. Here, taking baijiu fermentation as an example, we revealed that geography-dependent flavor was contributed mainly by fungus-bacterium cooperative metabolism. The distinct initial microbial composition, distribution, and intraspecific genomic diversity limited reproducible microbial interactions and metabolism in different geographical areas. The abundant microbial resources and predicted fungus-bacterium interactions found in baijiu fermentation enable us to design a synthetic microbial community to reproduce desired flavor profiles in the future.