Abstract
It is undeniable that music and sounds can affect our emotions and mood, but so far the study of physical stimuli provoked by sound on living organisms has been mostly focused on brain and sensorimotor structures rather than cellular metabolism. Using metabolomics, we compared the physiology of yeast cells growing in defined liquid medium exposed to music, high and low frequency sonic vibration and silence. All sonic stimuli tested not only increased the growth rate of the yeast cells by 12% but they also reduced biomass production by 14%. The intra- and extracellular metabolite profiles differed significantly depending on the sonic stimulus applied showing that different metabolic pathways are affected differently by different sound frequency. Therefore, our results clearly demonstrate that sound does affect microbial cell metabolism when growing in liquid culture, opening an entirely new perspective for scientific investigation interfacing acoustics, biophysics and biochemistry.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aggio, R. B. M., Ruggiero, K., & Villas-Bôas, S. G. (2010). Pathway Activity Profiling (PAPi): From the metabolite profile to the metabolic pathway activity. Bioinformatics, 26, 2969–2976.
Aggio, R. B. M., Villas-Bôas, S. G., & Ruggiero, K. (2011). Metab: An R package for high-throughput analysis of metabolomics data generated by GC-MS. Bioinformatics, 27, 2316–2318.
Harvey, E. N., Harvey, E. B., & Loomis, A. L. (1928). Further observations on the effect of high frequency sound waves on living matter. Biological Bulletin Marine Biological Laboratory, 55, 459–469.
Harvey, E. N., & Loomis, A. L. (1928). High frequency sound waves of small intensity and their biological effects. Nature, 121, 622–624.
Jomdecha, C., & Prateepasen, A. (2006). The research of low-ultrasonic energy effects on yeast growth in fermentation process. In 12th Asia-Pacific Conference on NDT, 5th–10th November 2006, Auckland, New Zealand.
Koelsch, S., Offermanns, K., & Franzke, P. (2010). Music in the treatment of affective disorders: An exploratory investigation of a new method for music-therapeutic research. Music Perception, 27, 307–316.
Li, B., Wei, J., Tang, K., Liang, Y., Shu, K., & Wang, B. (2008). Effect of sound wave stress on antioxidant enzyme activities and lipid peroxidation of Dendrobium candidum. Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, 63, 269–275.
Matsuhashi, M., Pankrushina, A. N., Takeuchi, S., Ohshima, H., Miyoi, H., Endoh, K., et al. (1998). Production of sound waves by bacterial cells and the response of bacterial cells to sound. The Journal of General and Applied Microbiology, 44, 49–55.
Naimark, G. M., Klair, J., & Mosher, W. A. (1951). A bibliography on sonic and ultrasonic vibration: Biological, biochemical and biophysical applications. Journal of The Franklin Institute, 251, 279–299.
Pickett, J. P., et al. (2000). The American Heritage ® Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Polous, Y. U. M., & Kurko, V. S. (1991). Sound-wave stimulation of duodenal motility in chronic duodenal ileus. Klinicheskaya Meditsina, 69, 42–44.
Sherman, F. (1997). Yeast genetics. In R. A. Meyers (Ed.), The encyclopaedia of molecular biology and molecular medicine (Vol. 6, pp. 302–325). Weinheim: VCH Publisher.
Smart, K. F., Aggio, R. B. M., Van Houtte, J. R., & Villas-Bôas, S. G. (2010). Analytical platform for metabolome analysis microbial cells using methyl chloroformate derivatization followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Nature Protocols, 5, 1709–1729.
Syroeshkin, A. V., Bakeeva, L. E., & Cherepanov, D. A. (1998). Contraction transitions of F1–F0 ATPase during catalytic turnover. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1409, 59–71.
Verduyn, C., Postma, E., Scheffers, W. A., & van Dijken, J. P. (1992). Effect of benzoic acid on metabolic fluxes in yeasts: A continuous-culture study on regulation of respiration and alcoholic fermentation. Yeast, 8, 501–517.
Villas-Bôas, S. G., Moxley, J. F., Åkesson, M., Stephanopoulos, G., & Nielsen, J. (2005). High-throughput metabolic state analysis: The missing link in integrated functional genomics of yeasts. Biochemical Journal, 388, 669–677.
Wood, R. W., & Loomis, A. L. (1927). The physical and biological effects of high frequency sound waves of great intensity. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, 4, 417–436.
Xiujuan, W., Bochu, W., Yi, J., Defang, L., Chuanren, D., Xiaocheng, Y., et al. (2003). Effects of sound stimulation on protective enzyme activities and peroxidise isoenzymes of chrysanthemum. Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, 27, 59–63.
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to Gregory Cook, Matthew Goddard, Richard Gardner, and Vladimir Obolonkin for valuable comments and to Anthony Hickey for discussion and critical reading of this manuscript. We also thank Farhana Pinu and Sang Kim for technical assistance with media and sample preparation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Raphael Bastos Mereschi Aggio and Victor Obolonkin contributed equally to this work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Aggio, R.B.M., Obolonkin, V. & Villas-Bôas, S.G. Sonic vibration affects the metabolism of yeast cells growing in liquid culture: a metabolomic study. Metabolomics 8, 670–678 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-011-0360-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-011-0360-x