AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Autofluorescence due to NADH has been used as the method for non-invasively monitoring metabolic response related to mitochondrial function. Cellular suspensions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are perturbed by the addition of cyanide, a mitochondrial modifier that acts as an inhibitor of the respiratory chain, and resulting autofluorescence responses are observed to understand the metabolic pathways. We have used the spectral phasor technique to quantify the responses at different concentrations of cyanide. The spectral phasors technique is a sensitive approach for analyzing multicomponent systems. An important property of this is that for a two-state system the spectral phasor points lay along a line. The ability of spectral phasor to detect small changes in autofluorescence signal is helpful to find out whether different pathways are involved at different concentrations of cyanide. The next thing of interest is to know the proportion of free and bound NADH. Free NADH is important due to its role in electron transport chain whereas bound NADH is important because it represents the energy reserve. Since, each state of NADH is important for different reasons, knowing their state before and after addition of cyanide is crucial in understanding the metabolic state of the cell. Additionally, we are studying autofluorescence response to oxygenation before and after addition of a range of cyanide concentration. Advisors/Committee Members: Urayama, Paul (Advisor).