Abstract
This paper reports about experimental results concerning the influence of 30 nm ZnO nanoparticles on biomass, carbohydrates, β-glucans, proteins accumulation and catalase enzyme activity at Saccharomyces cerevisiae CNMN-Y-20 yeast strain exposed to alcohol action. Alcohol in concentrations of 2%, 5% and 10% added to culture medium has been reported to stimulate β-glucans biosynthesis and to inhibit protein synthesis. Low biomass production, with 71% less that control, was detected in the experiments with 10% alcohol. ZnO nanoparticles in combination with alcohol do not offer sufficient protection for the proteins biosynthesis, but efficiently protect the carbohydrates and β-glucans biosynthetic processes, which contents in the biomass are with 16.6% and 19.9% higher than control, respectively. The maximum value of β-glucans content was established in case of cultivation of selected yeast strain on YPD medium supplemented with 5 mg/L nanoparticles ZnO and 2% alcohol. The obtained results allowed the elaboration of new procedure for directed synthesis of β-glucans that contributed to an increase of this component with 30.7%, compared to control.