A High-Throughput Yeast Halo Assay for Bioactive Compounds

When a disk of filter paper is impregnated with a cytotoxic or cytostatic drug and added to solid medium seeded with yeast, a visible clear zone forms around the disk whose size depends on the concentration and potency of the drug. This is the traditional "halo" assay and provides a convenient, if low-throughput, read-out of biological activity that has been the mainstay of antifungal and antibiotic testing for decades. Here, we describe a protocol for a high-throughput version of the halo assay, which uses an array of 384 pins to deliver ∼200 nL of stock solutions from compound plates onto single-well plates seeded with yeast. Using a plate reader in the absorbance mode, the resulting halos can be quantified and the data archived in the form of flat files that can be connected to compound databases with standard software. This assay has the convenience associated with the visual readout of the traditional halo assay but uses far less material and can be automated to screen thousands of compounds per day.