Cultured successfully yeasts detecting explosives

A group of American scientists have successfully cultivated a special yeast that is capable of changing to fluorescent green when exposed to air containing explosive molecules. The study was published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology , published on 7-5.

(Photo: Physorg.com)

The yeast has a scientific name, saccharomyces cerevisiae , which is widely used in alcohol production and bread. The scientists introduced a fungus gene, a gene extracted from mice, that could react when exposed to DNT (scientific name 2.4-dinitrotoluen).

To see whether yeast is effective in detecting explosives, they added one more gene and this second gene caused the yeast to change color when exposed to DNT.

DNT is a byproduct of TNT explosive processing industry and is often used as a model in the process of training professional dogs to detect explosives.

The authors of the new yeast cultivating work, including researchers from Temple University Medical School, Philadelphia, USA, led by Danny Dhanasekaran, will continue to study the effect further. of this yeast and hope to put it into practice soon. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most commonly used experimental subjects. The genome of this fungus has been decoded since 1996.