Cost-Effective Solid-State NMR Of Fungal Glucans: A Case Study On Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Solid-state NMR provides molecular-level insights into fungal cell walls, but full ¹³C-enrichment is costly and limits biological replication. Here, we show that 10% ¹³C-glucose labeling in Schizosaccharomyces pombe is sufficient to resolve the major carbohydrate resonances and quantify glucan composition with high reproducibility. We then examined cell wall composition at two temperatures, both in whole cells and in extracted wall fractions. Interestingly, whole cell spectra indicated minor, nonsignificant changes with temperature, while extracted walls revealed differences between the rigid glucan matrices with β-1,3-glucan especially enriched at 36 ${}^{\circ }C$ . Together, these results establish low-level ¹³C labeling as a cost-effective strategy for fungal solid-state NMR and highlight the complementary strengths of whole cell and extracted wall-level analysis in uncovering how the effect of elevated temperature is encoded in cell wall architecture.