Objective

Brewer’s yeast (S. cerevisiae) is well known for its ability to produce ethanol from glucose. When glucose is depleted, if oxygen is present, yeast reorganises its metabolism to consume the ethanol. This is known as the diauxic shift.  In biology it is used as a model for general cellular reorganisation.  It is also of medical significance in the understanding of cancer, as solid tumour cells typically fuel increased energy demands by switching from mitochondrial respiration to glycolysis. This is called the Warburg effect and produces the animal equivalent of ethanol, lactic acid.

 As part of the CHIST-ERA AdaLab project we have developed automated methods using colourimetric assays to track ethanol and glucose production and consumption in yeast, as well as yeast growth over an extended period. This approach avoids the need for specialised sensors or chemostats, and enables the analysis of up to eight strains per microplate.  It is designed to enable us to screen compounds on both wild type & non-standard diauxic shift phenotype yeast strains, enabling the search for Warburg effect inhibitors.