Saccharomyces cerevisiae has an extensive history of use in the area of food processing. Also known as Baker's Yeast or Brewer's Yeast, this organism has been used for centuries as leavening for bread and as a fermenter of alcoholic beverages. With a prolonged history of industrial applications, this yeast has been either the subject of or model for various studies in the principles of microbiology. Jacob Henle based his theories of disease transmission on studies of strains of Brewer's Yeast. Currently, S. cerevisiae is the subject of a major international effort to characterize a eucaryotic genome