Counting Yeast Cells Using a hemocytometer - MetabolicEngineeringGroupCBMA/MetabolicEngineeringGroupCBMA.github.io GitHub Wiki

Introduction

The hemacytometer has been an essential tool for hematologists, medical practitioners, biologist and now brewers and ethanol production researchers. Yeasts are an economically important organism used for ethanol production, in the beverage and alternative fuels industries as well as a leavening agent in the baking industry. Concentration and viability determinations are routinely performed for quality control purposes in yeast production, fermentation processes, and fungicides research to monitor proliferation of pathogenic yeasts.

Resuspend one package (25g) of yeast in 1L of tap water.

Make a serial dilution

Clean the hemacytometer and glass cover slip with 70% EtOH

Place the glass cover slip over the counting chambers

Mix well and incubate at 35° C for 1 to 2 hours

Pipette 10 microliters of cell sample into the hemacytometer

Wait 60 seconds for the cells to settle