Need Tips and Tricks on plate-reading Lycopene production of E.coli

[koitk]

TL;DR

I need to measure the Lycopene production of E.coli strain on different mediums.

I have used Acetone, to extract Lycopene from bacteria, as described in literature. But when I started to measure the absorbance (470 nm) using 96-well microplates, some of the acetone would evaporate and ruin my results (even with the lid on).
Most of the literature that i have read uses HPLC to evaluate production, but some have used absorbance as well, but they don't specify their methods in great detail.
Can anyone help me by give me some tips, how could i slow down the evaporation. Or maybe i should use a different solvent?

Thank you in advance,
a desperate undergrad :)

 

[jim mcnamara]

This paper seems to have extracted and measured lycopene concentrations from tomato skin containing products.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2621.2010.02491.x

 

[koitk]

Thank you for your reply!
This is a very detailed description of lycopene extraction from tomatoes. But it will not be of much use to me.
Extraction of lycopene form bacterium is much easier, and i have read articles about it. I just need to add solvent, incubate and centrifuge pellet.
My main concern is finding a organic solvent, that can penetrate trough E.coli cell walls, is transparent and has a higher boiling point than acetone (56 C).
Or are there any tips, how to use acetone as a solvent and read 96-well microplates in a plate reader, without it evaporating.

 

[Tom.G]

Refrigerate the samples?