Artificial Intelligence in Yeast Biotechnology: Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges

Abstract

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has been steadily growing across various fields in recent years. AI can have significant advantages for industries, including automation, reliable prediction, enhanced process control, and improved efficiency. Particularly, the field of academic research has embraced AI as a tool to address global challenges. Yeast strains, especially Saccharomyces cerevisiae, serve as key model organisms and industrial cell factories, enabling fundamental biological discoveries and advanced biotechnological applications through conserved eukaryotic pathways and modern metabolic engineering tools. Yeast cell biology can benefit from AI through its optimization of the fermentation process via an advanced control system, accelerated identification and classification of yeast strains through deep learning, predictive analysis of multi-omics biological data, strain engineering, and as a powerful approach in the evolution of the yeast genotype–phenotype map to explore novel biology. This review evaluates the benefits of using AI in biological studies leveraging yeast strains, discusses the challenges and limitations, and outlines the prospects.