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 2x10(5) CFU/ml (p < 0.005). Thus, turboLysis offers good cell lytic performance in a small form factor at a low cost.