Fast and reproducible method for cell disruption

Introduction

Bead beating is a very effective and reliable method greatly superior to the manual procedure involving a Vortexer. RETSCH's Mixer Mill MM 400 can be equipped with tube adapters for high throughput, ensuring a reproducible, fast and efficient cell disruption process with very good results.

Cell disruption of bacteria, yeast, filamentous fungi or microalgae is a standard procedure in basic biological research, applied biotechnology or medical research to get access to nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) or cell proteins. For the isolation of DNA or RNA usually less than 1 ml of cell material is needed. For the extraction of proteins, however, larger amounts of cell suspension are required. A very efficient method of cell disruption is the co called “bead beating” where cells in suspension are mechanically disrupted by glass beads in single-use reaction vials.

A very basic method is to hold the reaction vial over a Vortexer, thus dispersing cell suspension and glass beads in the vial which leads to breaking of the cell walls by shearing effects. This method is time-consuming and error-prone, particularly for high sample throughput or cell disruption times up to 10 minutes. The use of RETSCH’s Mixer Mill MM 400 in combination with the Falcon tube adapter, which accepts up to 8 tubes, makes the process reproducible, fast and efficient. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated in this application alert using the examples of cell disruption of yeast cells (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and microalgae cells (Thalassiosira pseudonana and Phaeodactylum tricornutum).

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