Acoustic technology for high-performance disruption and extraction of plant proteins

Acoustic technology shows the capability of protein pellet homogenization from different tissue samples of soybean and rice in a manner comparable to the ordinary mortar/pestle method and far better than the vortex/ultrasonic method with respect to the resolution of the protein pattern through two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE). With acoustic technology, noncontact tissue disruption and protein pellet homogenization can be carried out in a computer-controlled manner, which ultimately increases the efficiency of the process for a large number of samples. A lysis buffer termed the T-buffer containing TBP, thiourea, and CHAPS yields an excellent result for the 2D-PAGE separation of soybean plasma membrane proteins followed by the 2D-PAGE separation of crude protein of soybean and rice tissues. For this technology, the T-buffer is preferred because protein quantification is possible by eliminating the interfering compound 2-mercaptoethanol and because of the high reproducibility of 2D-PAGE separation.