Cryogenic Tissue Pulverizers for Molecular Biology and Proteomics

Cryogenic tissue pulverization involves mechanically crushing biological tissue that has been frozen in liquid nitrogen, creating a fine powder.  This sample preparation method preserves RNA, DNA and protein integrity for analysis techniques such as RNA-seq, qPCR, metabolomics and proteomics.

The Cellcrusher

The Cellcrusher tissue pulverizer reduces most tissues to a fine, easily recoverable powder.

Its curved surfaces are designed for fast easy cleaning and effective cell disruption.

The sample size range is 20 mg to 5 g.

Cellcrusher-mini

The Cellcrusher-mini allows the recovery of small samples inside a frozen “popsicle” of buffer.

With six chambers, each only 8 mm wide, this novel tissue pulverizer offers unparalleled efficiency when crushing and recovering tiny samples, such as biopsies.

The sample size range is 2 mg to 40 mg.

Cellcrusher video

This step-by-step video demonstrates the Cellcrusher cell lysis workflow and is accompanied by a written protocol.

Drill bit

Particularly difficult samples (eg. skin, seeds) are completely reduced with the drill-bit accessory.

This tool is used with a ordinary household drill and the Cellcrusher.

Why are the Cellcrusher’s surfaces curved?

The Cellcrusher’s curved surfaces facilitate easy sample recovery and cleaning.  The ergonomic design of the device and accessories allow for manipulation of the device at liquid nitrogen temperatures.

Previously, cell disruption with other pulverizers involved loss of valuable sample and use of awkward freezer gloves, due to right-angled surfaces and other design shortcomings.  The Cellcrusher curved inner chamber can be cleaned at liquid nitrogen temperatures, saving the time and effort needed to warm, clean and subsequently re-cool an extremely cold metal object.

Common applications

• Cryogenic grinding for RNA extraction at liquid nitrogen temperatures

• Pulverizing plant tissue (e.g., leaf or root tissue, Arabidopsis rosettes)

• Tough tissues such as cartilage, tumor samples, and other physically robust specimens

• Hard/dry specimens (e.g., seeds/skin) using the drill-bit accessory

• Processing small samples for metabolomics using the Cellcrusher-mini

How do you cryopulverize very small samples?

As tissue sample size shrinks, recovering miniscule amounts of frozen powder and transferring into buffer becomes more difficult.  The Cellcrusher-mini is our patent-pending solution.  Samples are recovered inside a frozen “popsicle” of buffer on a pipette tip, fits neatly into a 1.5 ml microcentrifuge tube for quick and easy storage.

This innovation is a response to demand from customers who disrupt a lot of very small (2 mg to 40 mg) cryogenic samples.  Examples of such tissues would be biopsies or microdissected samples.  A full workflow diagram and protocol is available here.

How do you cryogenically disrupt dry or difficult tissue types?

Cell disruption by cryo-impacting relies to a certain extent on the presence of water inside the sample.  In simple terms, ice adds “brittleness” to the sample and microfractures in the ice help shear cell membranes.  Therefore, dry tissues such as seeds (such as maize, wheat and rice) or bark can be difficult to break by impact alone.  In response to this problem, we offer a drill bit accessory which is used with the Cellcrusher and a household drill.  This accessory allows for an additional grinding action which is helpful for complete cell lysis.