Abstract
Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has emerged as a powerful biophysical tool in biotechnology and medicine to investigate the morphological, physical, and mechanical properties of yeasts and other biological systems. However, properties such as, yeasts' response to environmental stresses, metabolic activities of pathogenic yeasts, cell-cell/cell-substrate adhesion, and cell-flocculation have rarely been investigated so far by using biophysical tools. Our recent results obtained by AFM on one strain each of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe show a clear correlation between the physiology of environmentally stressed yeasts and the changes in their surface morphology. The future directions of the AFM related techniques in relation to yeasts are also discussed.
Highlights
It is important to know more about yeasts, with the twofold aim to either exploit them better or to defend us more efficiently against them
TheScientificWorldJOURNAL (2006) 6, 777–780 aggregation of yeast cells due to specific interactions plays a crucial role in the natural environment, medicine, and biotechnology[13]
Over the past few years, the use of atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate the properties of microbial surfaces at nano-scale has largely increased
Summary
It is important to know more about yeasts, with the twofold aim to either exploit them better (brewing and baking industry) or to defend us more efficiently against them (medical research). The use of AFM has proved to be very powerful to study the biophysical (adhesive) properties of yeasts[9], their aggregation[10], and the nanomechanical dynamic motion of their cell walls[11].
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