Cellular biosensing system for discovery of protein synthesis inhibitors with an electrochemical phosphate modulator to regulate the acid phosphatase gene expression of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

A cellular biosensing system for screening protein synthesis inhibitors has been developed by linking an electrochemical phosphate modulator and matrix-immobilized yeast cells with an optical sensing device. To screen the protein synthesis inhibitors, yeast phosphatase gene regulating system has been employed by linking an electrochemical phosphate modulator. Since the yeast phosphatuse gene coding gammaAPase is expressed, when the phosphate concentration in solution is lowered below the threshold. the gammaAPase production is triggered by lowering the phosphate concentration with the electrochemical phosphate modulator, and monitored continuously with the photometric device. The electrochemical phosphate modulator was assembled with matrix-immobilized yeast cells. The module could insert to ordinal cuvette to monitor the induced gammaAPase activity in an ordinal photometer. Using the system, induction profile of protein synthesis was easily observed and was affected remarkably by various protein synthesis inhibitors. This seems promising that the system can be applied for first screening process of de novo protein inhibitors. The cellular biosensing system seems promising in screening protein synthesis inhibitors. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.