Application Description
Spectrum: Cycloheximide is effective against fungi and yeast, including fungi found in brewing test media. It has lower activity against bacteria.
Microbiology Applications: Cycoloheximide is routinely used as a selection agent in several types of isolation media:
Columbia Blood Agar - Campylobacter Selective Supplement (Butzler)
Dermasel Agar - Selective Supplement for dermatophyte fungi
Campylobacter Agar - Campylobacter Selective Supplement (Preston)
Listeria Selective Agar - Listeria Selective Supplement
Listeria Enrichemnt Broth - Listeria Selective Enrichment Supplement
Listeria Enrichment Broth - Modified Listeria Selective Enrichemnt Supplement
STAA Agar - STAA Selective Supplement
Legionella CYE Agar - Legionella GVPC Selective Supplement
Campylobacter Agar - Campylobacter Selective Supplement (Karmali)
Bolton Broth - Bolton Broth Selective Supplement
Representative susceptibility data includes:
Candida albicans: 12.5 µg/ml
Saccharomyces cerevisiae: 0.2 µg/ml
Mycosphaerella graminicola: 5.62-100 µg/ml
For additional Cycloheximide MIC data, please review our Antimicrobial Index.Cycloheximide chase was used to analyze protein degradation in the model unicellular eukaryote, S. cerevisiae (buddiing yeast). Yeast cells are incubated in Cycloheximide and cell aliquots are collected after specific time points. This allows visualization of the degradation kinetics of the steady state population of a variety of cellular proteins (Buchanan et al, 2016).
Plant Biology Applications: Cycloheximide is used for in vitro applications to inhibit fungal growth by targeting protein synthesis. In yeast, concentrations of 200 µM have fungicidal effects (Schneider-Poetsch et al, 2009). The compound can be used as a plant growth regulator to stimulate ethylene production in leaves and fruit.
Eukaryotic Cell Culture Applications: Cycloheximide is widely used in biomedical research to inhibit protein synthesis in eukaryotic cells studied in vitro. It inhibits the synthesis of proteins and macromolecules,and affects apoptosis in eukaryotes.Cycloheximide Solution (C084) was used to study transcription factors (LMX1A and LMX1B) in the adult midbrain, contributing to our understanding of dopaminergic neuronal (mDAN) decline in Parkinson’s disease (Jimenez-Moreno et al, 2019).
Cancer Applications: Pretreatment with Cycloheximide followed by estrogen stimulation prevented the estrogen-induced changes in glucose metabolism in perfused breast cancer T47D clone 11 cells. This suggested that the estrogen stimulation requires synthesis of mRNA and protein (Neeman and Degani, 1989). In studying the “immune escape” of cancer cells, in human colorectal cancer cell line COLO 205 is normally resistant to TNF-alpha - a death inducing ligand. However, co-incubation TNF-alpha with Cycloheximide caused time-dependent cell death. In fact, authors found that Cycloheximide sensitizes cells to TNF-alpha-induced apoptosis (Pajak et al, 2005).