Probing the fungicidal property of CdS quantum dots on Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida utilis using MALDI-MS

For the first time, we report the successful application of inhouse synthesized CdS quantum dots (QDs) with particle sizes between 1 and 7 nm exhibiting excellent fungicidal activity based on the interactions with Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida utilis. The growth curves and the growth rates of both fungi were established in the presence of three varying concentrations of CdS QDs. It was observed that the CdS QDs were highly inhibitory even at the lowest concentration of 10 mg/L used in this study, while the untreated control cells followed a normal growth pattern in the cases of both Saccharomyces and Candida. MALDI-MS was applied to substantiate the observations obtained by direct cell count method. It was observed that the trend observed in the case of Saccharomyces and Candida was well-represented in the MALDI-MS spectra. This study proposes a mechanism for the first time based on MALDI-MS results, that the CdS QDs interact with the extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and remove small molecules from EPS layer; on the other hand, it was observed that CdS QDs at all concentrations lead to enrichment of protein signals in MALDI-MS. We have substantiated these results by quantifying the EPS in the control and treated cells and also using TEM to further confirm the results.