Yeast Extract Pellet Preparation

From Powers Lab UC Davis

1. Inoculate 5 mL of YPD with toothpick swig of yeast strain of interest (grown from frozen permanent stock) and grow at 30°C for several hours.

2. Inoculate 1 L of YPD with aliquot of overday culture (amount is based on spectrophotometric reading of overday culture and calculation of approximation of time it will take for overnight culture to reach a certain O.D.600 ).

3. Grow cells to O.D.600 between 0.5 and 1.0.

4. Divide culture equally between 4 x 250 mL Corning disposable centrifuge tubes.

5. Centrifuge in Allegra tabletop centrifuge at approximately 4000 rpm for 10 min., room temperature.

6. Discard supernatant.

7. Resuspend each pellet (4 of them) in 50 mL cold sterile-filtered H2O. Use a 25 mL disposable pipet and a Pipet-Aid to gently resuspend the cells.

8. Consolidate resuspended cells/H2O to only 2 of the 250 mL Corning tubes.

9. Centrifuge in Allegra tabletop centrifuge at approximately 4000 rpm for 10 min, at room temperature.

10. Discard supernantant.

11. Resuspend each of the two pellets in 50 mL of cold 1X Yeast Extract Buffer (see Basic Recipe below). Transfer the cells/yeast extract buffer into 2 x 50 mL blue-capped Falcon tubes.

12. Centrifuge in Allegra tabletop centrifuge at approximately 4000 rpm for 10 min., at room temperature.

13. While cells are spinning, get liquid nitrogen and pour some into a 50 mL blue-capped Falcon tube (to about half to two-thirds full). Liquid nitrogen will boil at first. Poke three or four holes in the blue cap with a needle.

14. Discard supernatant.

15. Resuspend cells in cold 1X Yeast Extract Buffer containing protease inhibitors and phosphatase inhibitors. Volume of buffer used to resuspend the cells should be equal to the volume of the cell pellet (1:1 cell pellet to buffer).

16. Resuspend cells using a disposable 2-mL transfer pipet and then immediately drip the cell/buffer slurry into the liquid nitrogen in the 50 mL blue-capped Falcon tube forming cell/buffer "bullets".

17. Recap the Falcon tube and, as soon as the liquid nitrogen has boiled off, store at -80°C. Even if there is a small amount of liquid nitrogen remaining, it is OK to go ahead and put it in the -80°C freezer, because it will finish boiling off in there.