turboLysis: A low-cost, small footprint alternative to commercial bead beaters for cell lysis.

turboLysis is a novel mechanical cell lysis device that utilizes small beads to efficiently lyse tough cells like Mycobacterium, Saccharomyces, and Arabidopsis. We compared turboLysis to bead beating using the BeadBug 6 for several concentrations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis roughly correlated to the bacterial load commonly seen in patient samples. turboLysis performed similarly to the BeadBug at low bacterial concentrations and outperformed it at high concentrations above 2x105 CFU/ml (p<0.005). Thus, turboLysis offers good cell lytic performance in a small form factor at a low cost.

turboLysis是一种新型机械细胞裂解装置，它利用小珠子高效裂解分枝杆菌（Mycobacterium）、酵母菌（Saccharomyces）和拟南芥（Arabidopsis）等难裂解细胞。我们将turboLysis与使用BeadBug 6的珠磨法（bead beating）进行了对比，测试了结核分枝杆菌（Mycobacterium tuberculosis）的多种浓度——这些浓度大致与患者样本中常见的细菌载量相关。在低细菌浓度下，turboLysis的性能与BeadBug相当；而在浓度高于2×10^5 CFU/ml的高浓度条件下，其性能优于BeadBug（p<0.005）。因此，turboLysis以小巧的外形和低廉的成本实现了优异的细胞裂解性能。