Nucleic acid recovery from multiple tissues with scalable throughput utilizing the KingFisher Flex and Omni Bead Ruptor Elite bead mill homogenizer

Nucleic acid extractions from biological samples are pivotal for downstream molecular applications, driving advancements in genomics, transcriptomics, and biomolecular research.
Often, these nucleic acid extractions are performed with saliva, cellular culture, transport media, or other bodily fluids which provide easy to acquire nucleic acids. However, many researchers utilize solid tissue samples for their fundamental research which require additional handling steps such as homogenization to rapidly release intracellular nucleic acids for extraction. Manual homogenization protocols, however, introduce significant limitations—high variability, prolonged hands-on time, and a lack of scalability, compromising both throughput and data integrity. To address these issues, researchers and technicians must deploy semi-automated or automated solutions into their laboratories to allow for high quality data to be produced.

The Omni Bead Ruptor Elite™ bead mill homogenizer, integrated with the KingFisher™ Flex, offers an automated, high-throughput solution that addresses these challenges with tissue samples. By enabling efficient and reproducible cellular lysis and magnetic bead based nucleic acid extraction from diverse tissue types, including soft tissues like brain and liver and more fibrous matrices like skin and tumors, this system dramatically reduces manual intervention while maintaining high nucleic acid yield and integrity. This application note presents an efficient protocol for extracting nucleic acids from Mus musculus tissues—including liver, kidney, heart, skin, skeletal muscle, and lung.

Capable of processing up to 100 mg of tissue, this scalable workflow ensures robust performance across varying sample types, delivering nucleic acids that are immediately ready for downstream analysis. Pairing the Omni Bead Ruptor Elite bead mill homogenizer and the KingFisher™ Flex using this optimized protocol enhances laboratory efficiency, offering a reliable, reproducible, and automated approach for researchers working with complex tissue extractions.

Figure 3. The 260/280 and 260/230 absorbance ratio plotted for each replicate. The red dotted line represents the minimum accepted value for both ratios. (A260/A280=1.8, A260/A230=1.5).