Bead Mill Beadless Protein Extraction from Soft Tissues

The Omni Bead Ruptor Elite™ bead mill homogenizer vigorously shakes tubes filled with bead material to disrupt samples such as soft tissues. The impact between the beads and the sample reduces sample particle size and creates a homogenous mixture. While bead milling is an efficient method of homogenization, for some applications, the presence of the bead media within the sample can be a drawback. This is certainly the case for small samples that are heat sensitive. Heat produced through the bead milling process results from the kinetic energy generated from the beads impacting the sample and tube walls. Heat generation can be problematic when extracting volatile or heat sensitive samples such as proteins or RNA. 

Herein we evaluate the feasibility of a bead mill based “beadless” homogenization for protein extraction from soft tissues. Protein extraction efficiency is analyzed following a homogenization procedure in which tissues are homogenized on the Omni Bead Ruptor Elite bead mill homogenizer in tubes without beads present.

Table 1. Starting tissue sample mass and normalized protein yields.