People have been searching for the wild ancestor of lager yeast for decades.

Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine sequenced the genome of the Patagonian yeast and found it was a near-perfect match to the element used to brew lager.

"It proved to be distinct from every known wild species of yeast, but was 99.5 percent identical to the non-ale yeast portion of the lager genome," said Hittinger.