TY - JOUR T1 - Investigating lead removal at trace concentrations from water by inactive yeast cells JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.10.07.463380 SP - 2021.10.07.463380 AU - Patritsia M. Stathatou AU - Christos E. Athanasiou AU - Marios Tsezos AU - John W. Goss AU - Camron Blackburn AU - Filippos Tourlomousis AU - Andreas Mershin AU - Brian W. Sheldon AU - Nitin P. Padture AU - Eric M. Darling AU - Huajian Gao AU - Neil Gershenfeld Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/09/2021.10.07.463380.abstract N2 - Traces of heavy metals found in water resources, due to mining activities and e-waste discharge, pose a global threat. Conventional treatment processes fail to remove toxic heavy metals, such as lead, from drinking water in a resource-efficient manner when their initial concentrations are low. Here, we show that by using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae we can effectively remove trace lead from water via a rapid mass transfer process, achieving an uptake of up to 12 mg lead per gram of biomass in solutions with initial lead concentrations below 1 part per million. We found that the yeast cell wall plays a crucial role in this process, with its mannoproteins and β-glucans being the key potential lead adsorbents. Furthermore, we discovered that biosorption is linked to a significant increase in cell wall stiffness. These findings open new opportunities for using environmentally friendly and abundant biomaterials for advanced water treatment targeting emerging contaminants.One-Sentence Summary Removing toxic heavy metals from water at challenging trace levels in an environmentally friendly, resource-efficient manner.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -