Cell Disruption - Mild Lysis

Mild Lysis

For easily disrupted cells such as blood cells and insect or animal cells grown in culture media, a mild osmosis-based method for cell disruption (lysis) is commonly used. Quite frequently, simply lowering the ionic strength of the media will cause the cells to swell and burst. In some cases it is also desirable to add a mild surfactant and some mild mechanical agitation to completely disassociate the cellular components. Because these mild lytic methods are performed under chemically mild conditions, they are often used for subcellular fractionation studies.

Most biological cells are more difficult to disrupt. This includes most bacteria, yeast, algae and many plant and animal tissues. In these cases, mild lysis methods such as osmotic shock are insufficient to open the cell. Further, cost and relative effort to grow and harvest these cells, combined with the often small quantity of cells available to process, have favored cell disruption methods utilizing laboratory-scale manual mechanical devices such as bead mills (beadbeaters), rotor-stator homogenizers, ultrasonicators or high pressure homogenizers. These, and other stronger cell lysis methods are discussed below.