1f:T46d,Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolizes arginine, one of the major amino acids in grape musts, to ornithine and urea during wine fermentations. Wine yeast strains of S. cerevisiae do not fully metabolize urea during grape must fermentation. Urea is secreted by yeast cells and it reacts spontaneously with ethanol in wine to form ethyl carbamate, a potential carcinogenic agent for humans. The lack of urea catabolism by yeast in wine may be ascribed to the transcriptional repression of the DUR1,2 gene by good nitrogen sources present in the grape must. We expressed the DUR1,2 gene under control of the S. cerevisiae PGK1 promoter and terminator signals and integrated this DUR1,2 expression cassette, flanked by ura3 sequences, into the URA3-locus of the industrial wine yeast UC Davis 522. In vivo assays showed that the metabolically engineered industrial strain reduced ethyl carbamate in Chardonnay wine by 89.1%. Analyses of the genotype, phenotype, and transcriptome revealed that the engineered yeast 522^EC− is substantially equivalent to the parental 522 strain.20:T429,The role of copper(II) species in the oxidation of inorganic cyanide to cyanate and in the conversion of cyanate or urea into ethyl carbamate was investigated. The oxidation process has been shown to be independent from the dissolved oxygen. Elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy have shown the formation of a mixed copper carbonate/hydroxide in the process of oxidation of cyanide to cyanate in water/ethanol. The complexation to Cu(II) of cyanate formed upon cyanide oxidation makes the former more susceptible to nucleophilic attack from ethanol, with conversion into ethyl carbamate. Comparatively, urea has a minor role with respect to cyanide in the formation of ethyl carbamate. Therefore, the urea present in some samples of Brazilian sugar cane spirit (cachaça) has been shown to have almost no influence on the ethyl carbamate content of cachaças, which comes essentially from cyanide. Fe(II,III) affords results similar to those found with Cu(II). Some suggestions are presented to avoid ethyl carbamate formation in spirits during distillation.21:T6d0,

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