The biosensor based on electrochemical dynamics of fermentation in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The zymase activity of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is sensitive to environmental parameters and is therefore used as a microbiological sensor for water quality assessment, ecotoxicological characterization or environmental monitoring. Comparing to bacterial bioluminescence approach, this method has no toxicity, excludes usage of genetically modified microorganisms, and enables low-cost express analysis. This work focuses on measuring the yeast fermentation dynamics based on multichannel pressure sensing and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Measurement results are compared with each other in terms of accuracy, reproducibility and ease of use in field conditions. It has been shown that EIS provides more information about ionic dynamics of metabolic processes and requires less complex measurements. The conducted experiments demonstrated the sensitivity of this approach for assessing biophotonic phenomena, non-chemical water treatments and impact of environmental stressors.