Monitoring of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell proliferation on thiol-modified planar gold microelectrodes using impedance spectroscopy

An impedance spectroscopic study of the interaction between thiol-modified Au electrodes and Saccharomyces cerevisiae of strain EBY44 revealed that the cells formed an integral part of the interface, modulating the capacitive properties until a complete monolayer was obtained, whereas the charge transfer resistance (R-ct) to the redox process of [Fe(CN)6](3-14-) showed a linear relationship to the number of cells even beyond the monolayer coverage. R,, showed strong pH dependence upon increasing the pH of the utilized buffer to 7.2. Upon addition of S. cerevisiae cells at pH 7.2, the obtained value of R,, showed over 560% increase with respect to the value obtained on the same thiol-modified electrode without cells. It was demonstrated that real-time monitoring of S. cerevisiae proliferation, with frequency-normalized imaginary admittance (real capacitance) as the indicator, was possible using a miniaturized culture system, ECIS Cultureware, with integrated planar cysteamine-modified Au microelectrodes. A monolayer coverage was reached after 20-28 h of cultivation, observed as an similar to 15% decrease in the real capacitance of the system.