Raman spectroscopy of yeast cells cultured on a deuterated substrate

Raman spectroscopy of cells cultured in a deuterated substrate is a promising approach to the characterization of mass transfer and enzymatic reactions in living cells. Here, we studied the potential of this approach using the example of yeast cells cultured under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. In our experiments, unadapted to D₂O Saccharomyces cerevisiae were cultured in a medium with different concentrations of deuterium oxide and deuterated glucose. It has been shown that the addition of even 10% heavy water leads to a general decrease in the amount of lipids in cells. In the Raman spectra of cells cultured at high concentrations of D₂O, additional peaks are found, which are associated with the deuteration of entire chemical groups. We observed a similar effect in the ethanol synthesized by yeast fermentation, the deuteration of which also depends on the concentration of D₂O. The results on the characterization of cell deuteration turned out to be in qualitative agreement with the known estimate that aerobic metabolism is 15 times more active than ethanol fermentation. The results of our work determine new limitations and prospects for further application and development of the Raman method of spectroscopy of deuterium tags.