The present work focused on the importance of performing EBA experiments under real process conditions. To this end, a high ionic strength medium was used. The influence of cultivating Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells on their subsequent adsorption on a Q HyperZ anion-exchanger was investigated. Two types of industrial yeast cells were used. Once cultured, both types of cells presented similar hydrophilic surface properties and identical adsorption profiles on the anion-exchanger. This was significantly different from the results obtained in previous work on the same yeast cells, just rehydrated in saline buffer, a biological model widely used in the literature. It was postulated that unavoidable "sticky" compounds, initially present in the culture medium or formed during the drying process, were strongly adsorbed on the cell wall and could not be completely removed during the successive washings of the rehydrated cell suspension before use. This could dramatically alter the yeast surface properties and modify the biomass/adsorbent interactions and the bed hydrodynamics, thus demonstrating the necessity to work with yeast coming from fresh cultures. Using biologically active yeast cells allowed to really elucidating the main physico-chemical mechanisms involved in cell adsorption by focusing on the role of the non-electrostatic interactions. Two laboratory mutant yeast strains in which the protein-related cell wall biogenesis was affected, were tested. No significant differences were observed between hydrophilic and hydrophobic yeast cells: the bed remained stable at its initial value and there was a low adsorption ratio in a narrow range between 10% and 17%. This clearly demonstrated that non-electrostatic interactions play a minor role on the affinity of yeast to anion-exchanger adsorbents. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.