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hittingerlab.bsky.social
HittingerLab
@hittingerlab.bsky.social
470 followers 610 following 50 posts
Yeast evolutionary genomics with applications in brewing and bioenergy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Moderated by Hittinger Lab members. Opinions do not necessarily belong to anyone. Lab website: http://hittinger.genetics.wisc.edu.
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hittingerlab.bsky.social
Congratulations to our wonderful PI, Chris Todd Hittinger, on receiving the Vilas Mid-Career Investigator Award from the UW–Madison Laboratory of Genetics! This recognition highlights his continued excellence in research, teaching, training, and mentorship. 🎉

genetics.wisc.edu/2025/12/09/d...
December 9, 2025 at 9:57 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
We were featured in the Yeast Newsletter, published in June and December every year with Western University, serving as an informal communication method for those interested in all things yeast-biology. Checkout pages 18-23! www.uwo.ca/biology/Yeas...
December 8, 2025 at 9:15 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
ECAR variation is associated with glycolyitc genes across the yeast subphylum (Figure 1 in this work)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.02.679963v2
October 7, 2025 at 5:14 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
Congrats to @emuthemycologist.bsky.social for presenting her first talk at #MSAfungi25!
July 2, 2025 at 9:52 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
Congratulations to @linder-surprise.bsky.social for winning an award for mentoring undergraduates from the office of the Provost! 🎉

@glbioenergy.bsky.social @uwenergy.bsky.social
May 15, 2025 at 3:35 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
Congratulations to Katarina Aranguiz for being recognized with an award for best poster at the UW-Madison Fungal Supergroup Undergraduate Symposium!

@glbioenergy.bsky.social @uwbiochem.bsky.social
May 6, 2025 at 6:37 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
Congratulations to Lizza Korolev for being awarded the Hilldale Fellowship to support her undergraduate research!
@glbioenergy.bsky.social @uwenergy.bsky.social @tksato.bsky.social
Lizza holds up a certificate for her fellowship
April 30, 2025 at 3:52 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
Importantly, this also decreases the variation in fermentation from different harvest years of switchgrass:
A graph showing that increasing the pH from 5 to 5.8 increases ethanol yields from switchgrass hydrolysate.
January 21, 2025 at 4:44 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
In case you happen to be in Tokyo, Masako Takashima organized on "Yeasts and fermentation: progress brought by genomic data" tomorrow afternoon, 13th December 2024: nodaiweb.university.jp/nric/yeast/i...
December 12, 2024 at 5:29 AM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
We also zoomed out to look at the (very large) Major Facilitator Superfamily across diverse yeasts and found that these specialized alpha-glucoside transporters likely evolved from a generalist ancestral transporter.

See the full paper for more!
December 2, 2024 at 8:11 PM
hittingerlab.bsky.social
Turns out that multiple simultaneous mutations are required for this - explaining why our evolved isolate had a chimeric transporter.
Fig. 2.High-order intramolecular interactions are required to evolve a novel function in chimeric α-glucoside transporters. Points and bars show mean ± standard error of the mean of normalized growth on maltotriose (AUC) of strains expressing chimeric transporters or wild-type MalT4 (top row). Filled circles denote growth significantly greater than the negative control (P < 0.01, Mann–Whitney U test with Benjamini–Hochberg correction). The architecture of each tested transporter is depicted as a cartoon on the y axis, where rounded rectangles represent each of the 12 TMHs and circles represent the ICH domain that links the N- and C-terminal six-helix bundles; regions are colored by parental protein identity. In almost every case, the N- and C-terminal intracellular regions have the same parental protein identity as the neighboring TMH and are omitted for clarity; the two exceptions are depicted. Inverted arrows and brackets indicate the location and identity of protein regions underlying the largest detected intramolecular interaction.
December 2, 2024 at 8:11 PM