Sample Preparation Procedures for the Global Metabolite Profiling of Yeast

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the most frequently used yeast strain. Metabolomics is the study of global changes of metabolome in a living organism and can be used for metabolic and physiological studies of the yeast. To obtain reliable and reproducible metabolomic data, the optimization of sample preparation methods is important. In this study, we evaluated various quenching methods and extraction solvents for the gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC/TOF MS) analysis. Among them, the cold methanol quenching methods showed significant losses of intracellular metabolites caused by severe cell membrane damage of yeast. Fast filtration method with acetonitrile/water mixture (1:1, v/v) at -20°C was the most suitable metabolome sampling method for the yeast in this study.