Improvement of Genome Annotation: Towards the Exploitation of Genomic Features of a Biotechnologically Relevant Yeast.

is the most commonly used yeast in wine, beer, and bread fermentations. However, has attracted interest in recent years due to its properties, ranging from its ability to produce flavor- and aroma-enhanced wine to its ability to survive longer in frozen dough. In this work, publicly available genomes of were explored and their annotation was improved. A total of 32 proteins were additionally annotated for the first time in the type strain CBS1146, in comparison with the previous annotation available. In addition, the annotation of the remaining three strains was performed for the first time. eggNOG-mapper was used to perform the functional annotation of the deduced coding genes, offering insights into its biological significance, and revealing 24 clusters of orthologous groups (COGs), which were gathered in three main functional categories: information storage and processing (28% of the proteins), cellular processing and signaling (27%), and metabolism (23%). Small intraspecies variability was found when considering the functional annotation of the four available genomes. A comparative study was also conducted between the genome and those from 386 fungal species, revealing a high number of homologous genes with species from the and genera, but also with and . Lastly, the phylogenetic placement of was clarified using the core homologs that were found across 204 common protein sequences of 386 fungal species and strains.