A Yeast-based sensor system for the detection of Endocrine disrupting compounds, coupled with high-performance thin layer chromatography.

Concerns have been raised about the prevalence of micro pollutants in the environment and their potential adverse effects on environmental and human health. The persistence of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) throughout wastewater treatment processes poses a significant health threat to humans. These chemical agents can bind to human hormone receptors and disturb the normal endocrine system function, leading to diverse potentially adverse effects.

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an ideal model system for detecting environmental steroid hormones and analogues, as it lacks endogenous steroid receptors. We designed a battery of fluorescent yeast strains which express either the human estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) or androgen receptor (AR). Upon binding the ERα- or AR-ligand complexes to the specific hormone response element, each of the yeast strains expresses green, red or blue fluorescent proteins. These whole-cell bioreporters are used to identify and quantify the presence of endocrine disrupting compounds in environmental samples. By coupling this biological assay with HPTLC, a standard method for EDCs separation, a wide variety of compounds can be screened simultaneously.

It is proposed that the combination of a chemical separation technique with an optical yeast-based bioassay may be a valuable addition to current chemical detection methods. It enables the detection of compounds with hormonal-related bioactivity, even when present in complex samples, alleviating the need for chemical analysis of the entire sample. Moreover, the combination of different reporter proteins will allow the detection of several EDC groups in a single assay, thus improving the robustness and cost-effectiveness of the procedure.