A capillary zone electrophoresis method for adenine nucleotides analysis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

• A novel capillary zone electrophoresis method was established to analyze adenine nucleotides from Saccharomyces cerevisiae extract.
• Validation analyses suggest that the method is reliable and accurate with high recovery and precision in the range of linearity.
• It is the first time that ATP, ADP, AMP, and cAMP were detected simultaneously in yeast.
• The current method may contribute to further metabolomics and system biology investigations of yeast.

Adenosine triphosphate and its metabolites are involved in the cellular metabolism process in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It is very important to simultaneously determine the relative contents of ATP and its metabolites in yeast. In this study, an effective capillary zone electrophoresis method with high selectivity was established. The calibration curves were linear in the concentration range from 1 to 20 mg/L (ATP and cAMP) and 2 to 40 mg/L (ADP and AMP) with excellent correlation coefficients (r2) > 0.999. The recovery of ATP, ADP, AMP, and cAMP were 99.4%, 94.7%, 100.3% and 99.6%, respectively. Simple sample preparation and easy detection of ATP and its metabolites make this method suitable for the study of changes in the four adenine nucleotides levels caused by caloric restriction in yeast. It is expected that the current method may contribute to further energy metabolism and related investigations of yeast.