The Effects of Industrial Grade, Multi Walled Carbon Nanotubes on Saccharomyces Cerevisiae
George Glasgow, Linda Gardiner, Shahlla Mir, Olufisayo Jejelowo, Ayodotun Sodipe

Abstract
Industrial applications of Carbon Nano-tubes(CNT) such as Multi-Walled Carbon Nano-tubes (MWCNT) has become a growing part of human lives in many interesting ways especially in delivering efficient healthcare treatment in hospitals and for biosensor studies in biomedical research institutes. This study is focused onevaluating the potential of CNT to cause harm to eukaryotic cells using a yeast cell, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. S. cerevisiaeis a microbial homologs of higher eukaryotes such as humans. Analyzing the effects of Industrial Multi-Walled Carbon Nano-tubes on S. cerevisiae cells with respect to cell viability and growth is evidently valuable for understanding the possible health and the genetic effects on humans. W303 S. cerevisiae wild-type was inoculated into yeast exract peptone dextrose(YPD) media containing 3mg of functionalized MWCNTs, and another media without a functionalized MWCNTs; and was incubated for a period of 36 hours. The cell culture, optical density and morphology were observed under a Genesys 20 Spectrophotometer, and a computer aided microscope aligned with a Nikon digital camera integrated into imaging software - Image-J. The study showed that W303 cells exposed to functionalize MWCNTs with a carboxyl (COOH), and hydroxyl (OH) functional groups grew with the same rateas the control and reached the stationary-phase of the cell growth cycle at the same time. Also, themorphological analysis of W303 cellsindicated that the functionalized MWCNTs had the greatest effect on cell morphology such as increase in size and diameter; whereas, a Non-functionalized MWCNTs was limited to no effect. Although the role of the functional groups, and the genetic effects of the CNT were not examined in this research, the study revealed acceptable level of eukaryotic cell viability as an indication that a well-managed use of CNT in biomedical applications such as in drug delivery for the treatment of cancer or biosensing may not have a single source of a damagingeffect on human health.

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