Detecting the metabolism of individual yeast mutant strain cells when aged, stressed or treated with antioxidants with diamond magnetometry

Free radicals play a key role in the ageing process. However, free radicals are small, reactive and short lived and thus challenging to measure. We utilize a new technique called diamond magnetometry for this purpose. We make use of nitrogen vacancy centers in nanodiamonds. Via a quantum effect these defects convert a magnetic resonance signal into an optical signal. While this method is increasingly popular for its unprecedented sensitivity in physics, we use this technique here for the first time to measure free radicals in living cells. Our signals are equivalent to T1 signals in conventional MRI but from nanoscale voxels from single cells with sub-cellular resolution. With this powerful tool we are able to follow free radical generation after chemically inducing stress. In addition, we can observe free radical reduction in presence of an antioxidant. We were able to clearly differentiate between mutant strains with altered metabolism. Finally, the excellent stability of our diamond particles allowed us to follow the ageing process and differentiate between young and old cells. We could confirm the expected increase of free radical load in old wild type and sod1Δ mutants. We further applied this new technique to investigate tor1Δ and pex19Δ cells. For these mutants an increased lifespan has been reported but the exact mechanism is unclear. We find a decreased free radical load in, which might offer an explanation for the increased lifespan in these cells.