A recent collaboration between the Murray Lab and the Nelson Lab found that microbial antagonism can mirror the formation and dissipation of beer bubbles. The study, led by then postdoc and current Cornell professor Andrea Giometto, investigated whether “nucleation theory” can explain the behavior of competing killer yeast strains and was in the journal eLife. Nucleation is a physical process that allows bubbles and crystals to form. In a glass of beer, small defects in the glass surface or impurities that have settled to the bottom, are nucleation sites for bubbles of carbon dioxide: large bubbles can overcome the energetic cost of forming an interface between liquid and gas, and thus grow in size, whereas smaller bubbles disappear.
