Scientists earn their bread, discover a new yeast

msnbc
By Jeanna Bryner
Managing editor
LiveScience
updated 3/23/2011 4:31:27 PM ET 2011-03-23T20:31:27

A new type of yeast sporting spores with rings around their centers, a la the planet Saturn, has come out of hiding in a cloud forest in Ecuador, researchers recently announced.

Yeasts are single-celled fungi that reproduce with various-shaped spores. The newly identified yeast now called Saturnispora quitensis was discovered growing on the fruit of an unidentified bramble collected from the Maquipucuna cloud forest nature reserve (also known as a fog forest), near Quito.

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