Abstract

Filadia P. Tileva, Lyubov K. Yotova and Gerard H. Markx*

Conditioning of cultures involves growing cells in the presence of increasing amounts of a toxic chemical. In order to investigate how conditioning affects a culture’s ability to resist new challenges, the resistance of Trichosporon cutaneum to various toxic chemicals, before and after conditioning to growth on phenol, was investigated by measuring the capacitance of cell suspensions at 0.4 MHz following a toxic challenge. The results show that cells grown on phenol are more resistant to the influence of polar aromatic toxic chemicals such as phenol (log Pow = 1.48) and benzylalcohol (log Pow = 1.1), but less resistant against less polar nonaromatic compounds such as n-octanol (log Pow = 2.9). In reverse, cells grown on glucose were found to be more resistant against n-octanol, but less so against phenol and benzylalcohol. The results indicate that cells, adapted to be more resistant to one type of substance, may become more susceptible to other compounds.