MEANS AND METHODS FOR LYSING BIOLOGICAL CELLS

Abstract

The present invention relates to a device comprising or consisting of: (a) a vessel; (b) a magnet inside said vessel; (c) means to trigger movement of said magnet with acoustic to ultrasonic frequency, preferably ultrasonic frequencies.

Claims

1. A device comprising: (a) a vessel; (b) a magnet inside said vessel; and (c) means to trigger movement of said magnet with acoustic to ultrasonic frequency.

2. The device of claim 1, wherein said means to trigger movement is (a) exterior to said vessel; and/or (b) at least one coil (ba) (i) comprising means for connecting said means to trigger movement to a power source; and/or (ii) connected to a power source; and/or (bb) having one to one thousand, one to ten, or two windings.

3. The device of claim 2, wherein said means to trigger movement is the at least one coil, and said coil(s) surround(s) said vessel.

4. The device of claim 2, wherein said power source delivers (a) alternating current; and/or (b) pulsed current including 2 to 10 times 30 to 120 sec with intervening pauses of 5 to 30 sec duration.

5. The device of claim 1, wherein said frequency is between about 2 kHz and about 1 MHz, between about 10 kHz and about 400 kHz, between about 15 kHz and about 50 kHz, or is 20 kHz.

6. The device of claim 1, wherein said device does not comprise lysis beads.

7. A device comprising: (a) a plate with an array of holes configured to receive an array of vessels; and (b) an array of coils, wherein for at least two holes, each hole is surrounded by at least one coil.

8. The device of claim 7, wherein said device is a circuit board with said coils being printed thereon.

9. A method of manufacturing the device of claim 8, said method comprising printing an array of coils onto a circuit board, said array comprising 96,384 or 1536 coils.

10. A method of performing lysis of cellular material and/or viruses, said method comprising: (a) providing the device of claim 1, wherein said vessel comprises: (a) sample(s) of said cellular material and/or viruses; and (b) triggering movement of the magnet comprised in said device, thereby performing lysis of said cellular material or of said viruses.

11. A method of performing lysis of cellular material and/or of viruses, said method comprising: (a) providing a device of claim 7; (b) combining said device with an array of vessels such that each vessel is surrounded by at least one coil, wherein each vessel comprises a magnet and a sample of cellular material; (c) triggering movement of the magnets comprised in said vessels; thereby performing lysis of said cellular material or of said viruses.

12. Use of the device of claim 1 for lysis of cellular material and/or of viruses.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein said cellular material is selected from possible tissue including bone and plant material.

14. A kit comprising: (a) a vessel; (b) a magnet; and (c) means to trigger ultrasonic movement of said magnet when placed inside said vessel.

15. A kit comprising: (a) an array of vessels; (b) an array of coils configured to receive vessels of said array of vessels; and (c) a plurality of magnets the number of which matches that of the vessels in said array of vessels.

Description

[0092] The Figures show:

[0093] FIG. 1: Schematic drawing of a device in accordance with the present invention. Two opposite orientations of the external magnetic field generated by a coil (20) are illustrated. The vessel (10) is equipped with chromatographic material (13). Also, it is equipped with an inlet (11) and an outlet (12). The magnet is depicted as a small square (30) with north pole and south pole. Plus and minus signs at the end of the coil indicates the connection to a power source (40) which is not shown in the drawing.

[0094] FIG. 2: FIG. 2(A) shows an exemplary vessel with a magnet inside. FIGS. 2(B) and 2(C) show arrays of vessels, designed for high throughput implementation of the methods of the present invention.

[0095] FIG. 3: FIGS. 3(A) and 3(B) show different views of a device in accordance with the second aspect of the invention, more specifically a circuit board with printed coils thereon. The format is the 8×12 format of microliter plates. In FIG. 3(C), part of the holes of the circuit board are occupied with vessels.

[0096] The Examples illustrate the invention.

EXAMPLE 1

[0097] Lysis

[0098] Triplicate test lysing and homogenizing muscle from S. domesticus in lysis buffer such as 0.1-10% w/v sodium deoxycholate buffer, optionally comprising detergents, demonstrated a better performance and sensitivity using a prototype setup compared to a well-established bead milling system employing the same lysis time and concentrations (Table 1). The results showed a relative 57% increase of protein extraction while using only 1/10.sup.th of starting material.

TABLE-US-00001 TABLE 1 Preliminary comparison using the FastPrep Bead milling system (Bead mill 1-3) and a prototype set-up with a spool of 26 windings and a frequency of 2 kHz (Magnet 1-3). Both method were used with three iterations of 60 sec. lysis and 15 sec. pauses. Bead Bead Bead Magnet Magnet Magnet mill 1 mill 2 mill 3 1 2 3 Starting amount 100 104 112 8 9 20 (mg) Lysis buffer (μl) 1000 1040 1120 80 90 200 Protein conc. after 1.4 1.5 1.4 2.2 2.2 3.7 lysis (mg/ml)

[0099] Additional tests revealed that the performance of a coil with a single winding demonstrated comparable performance as 2, 4, 8, 16 or 26 windings. Highly homogenization of grass leaves and heart muscle was also observed employing the testing platform.