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Rapid additive-free bacteria lysis using traveling surface acoustic waves in microfluidic channels
Haiwei Lu1, Kirk Mutafopulos2, John A Heyman2
1State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. weitz@seas.harvard.edu.
Abstract:
We report an additive-free method to lyse bacteria and extract nucleic acids and protein using a traveling surface acoustic wave (TSAW) coupled to a microfluidic device. We characterize the effects of the TSAW on E. coli by measuring the viability of cells exposed to the sound waves and find that about 90% are dead. In addition, we measure the protein and nucleic acids released from the cells and show that we recover about 20% of the total material. The lysis method should work for all types of bacteria. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using TSAW to lyse bacteria in a manner that is independent of the type of bacteria.
