Single-Cell Lysis

Cell lysis is a solution to break the outer cell membrane to allow effective release of intracellular constituents containing information about genetic or disease characteristics in genomics, proteomics and metabolomic. Commonly used methods for cell lysis include mechanical disruption, liquid homogenization, high-frequency sound waves, and reagent-based (chemical) methods. While, these processes are very demanding and time-consuming. The emerge of microfluidics devices provides a more efficient and fast way for cell lysis.

Methods for Microfluidic Cell Lysis

• Chemical lysis
  • Alkaline lysis
  • Detergent (surfactant) lysis
• Mechanical lysis: Sharp nanoscaled-obstacles integrated in microchannels offer shear stress to squeeze the cells and destroy their walls
• Thermal lysis: Apply high temperature to denature the proteins within cell membranes.
• Electrical lysis: Expose cells to an external electric field to create a potential crossing the cell membrane. Pores will be form on the cell membrane to release intracellular components once the potential exceeds a certain threshold.
• Laser lysis: Laser pulse focused at the buffer interface of a cell solution can produce a localized cavitation bubble, the expansion and the subsequent collapse of the bubble together with the induced fluid dynamic forces cause the local destroy of cell membrane.
• Acoustic lysis: Expose cells to a traveling surface acoustic wave (TSAW) field generated by an interdigitated transducer adjacent to the microchannel for cell lysis.
• Electrochemical lysis: Hydroxide ions generated during the electrolysis of saline solution are used as an alkaline lytic agent for cell lysis.

STEMart will help customers to select the most suitable method for cell lysis based on various criteria, such as cost, efficiency, lysis time, and technical difficulty of the process.

Table 1. Summarized comparison of different cell lysis methods (Grigorov E. etc. 2021)

For more information about our single-cell isolation service, please contact us.