Rouxii from Zygosaccharomyces

Zygosaccharomyces comprises nine species (Kurtzman, 1998c), of which Z. bailii, Z. bisporous, Z. muxii, and Z. florentinushzve been isolated from grape musts or wines. Sacchammyces rouxii and Zygosaccharomyces barkeri are synonyms of Z. rotixii (Deak and Beuchat, 1996). 

Martorell, P., Stratford, M., Steels, H., Femandez-Espinar, M. T., and Querol, A. (2007). Physiological characterization of spoilage strains of Zygosaccharomyces bailii and Zygosac-charomyces rouxii isolated from high sugar environments, lnt. ]. Food Microbiol. 114, 234-242. 

On the synthetic route to a novel class of orally active 2,3-benzodiazepines, scientists at Lilly have described a yeast reduction using Zygosaccharomyces rouxii (ATCC 14462) (Scheme 19.5).76-78 This intermediate is used in the synthesis of a novel class of benzodiazepines such as LY-300164 (1). The choice of this yeast strain came from a screen of numerous microbes. The product was isolated in >95% yield and >99.9% ee by use of an adsorbant polymeric resin.76-78... 

In an effort to reduce benzylmethylketone 6 Anderson et al. identified that the yeast Zygosaccharomyces rouxii could catalyze this transformation efficiently at low substrate concentration (Scheme 4.10). Since the substrate and product were both toxic to Z. rouxii, polymeric hydrophobic resins were used to both supply substrate and remove the product from the reaction mixture as it formed. This approach allowed the reaction concentration to be increased from 2 to 40 g L . The... 

Presumptive identification of a yeast suspected to be Zygosaccharomyces can be made by growing the isolate on media supplemented with 1% acetic acid. Saccharomyces sp. is not able to grow under these conditions. Further, among the species of Zygosaccharomyces, Z. bailli and Z. bisporous grow, whereas Z. rouxii will not. Other native yeast species may also be able to tolerate environmental acetic acid (Boulton et al., 1995). However, as the authors note, refermentation in sorbated sweet wine virtually eliminates these from consideration. 

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