IMPORTANT FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES

►  COOLING. Temperature control must be addressed when using a bead mill cell disrupter for the isolation of proteins, membranes or organelles.  The Mini-BeadBeater-96, like all other high-energy, shaking-type bead mill cell disrupters, will heat up a sample from collisional friction of the beads...about 10° for each minute of beadbeating. An important accessory for the MBB-96 is a 48 capacity 2 ml microvial holder and a 2 tube capacity 50 ml tube holder, both machined out of solid aluminum.  Cooled beforehand in a deep freezer or with liquid nitrogen, the mass of the aluminum vial holder and its excellent heat transfer properties maintain samples at their initial low temperature during the entire beadbeating run...something that some competitor's bead mills offering flowing cold air accessories fail to accomplish.  The fact is that air is not an efficient media for the transfer and rapid removal of heat.  For this same reason, operating a bead mill cell disruptor in a cold room offers little regulation of heat buildup during beadbeating.

But this is not always a concern.  Strict temperature control is not a needed when cells or tissue are being disrupted in the presence of DNA or RNA extraction media.

►  ”DRY” GRINDING. The Mini-BeadBeater-96 can be used to powder most dried plant and animal tissues and, at  liquid nitrogen temperatures, fresh tissues. Exceptions to the rule are woody tissue and some tissues having high lipid or oil content.  Most dry grinding is done using steel beads.

When dry- or cryo-grinding plant or animal tissue use our stainless steel microvials with silicone rubber caps, special XXTuff microvials or special Porvair Sciences deep well microplates. Common plastic microvials and deep well plates will break when dry grinding with steel beads.

To the tubes or wells add either one 6.3 mm diameter chrome-steel bead, two 6.3 mm diameter zirconia beads or three 3.2 mm diameter chrome-steel beads.   Beadbeat for 5-30 seconds.  Note that steel beads can be used in common plastic vials and common deep well microvials for wet grinding, provided that the vial is completely filled with aqueous media and the amount of entrapped air is minimized..

►  DEEP-WELL MICROPLATES. When using deep well microplates possible leakage and subsequent cross contamination between wells should be concern. While the entire mat surface area is evenly clamped to the microplate during beadbeating in the Mini-BeadBeater-96, the user must first thoroughly press the mat onto the microplate during the initial sealing process. Rollers and mat presses help in this task (see accessories listed below). The best mats are made of EVA or silicone rubber. Mats made of other rubber-like polymers or adhesive- or heat-bonded films - may not prevent leaking during the intense shaking in the Mini-BeadBeater-96.  There is an easy way to check for this concern.  Give us a call.

►  SPEED CONTROL.  The Mini-BeadBeater-96 features digital variable speed control presets between 1400 rpm to 2400 rpm and three programmable time presets.  These presets allow for storage of your favorite speed and time settings for easy retrieval.

SHOPPING GUIDELINES:  BioSpec Products was the first company to introduce bead mill cell disrupters to the scientific laboratory - some 30+ years ago.  This method of cell disruption of unicellular organisms and small tissue samples has superceded most traditional cell disruption methods.  In addition to BioSpec’s current five models of beadbeater cell disrupters, several other manufacturers now offer similar microvial-shaking, ‘beadbeater-type’ cell disrupters*.   Many of of these shakers fulfill the following physical parameters that assure maximum cell disruption performance: A SHAKING SPEED of at least 2000 rpm; a THROW or displacement of the vial of 3/4  to 1 inch, a FIGURE "8" SHAKING PATTERN and a NEAR HORZONTAL ORIENTATION of the vial, tube or microplate. The full incorporation of these parameters maximizes bead circulation and bead collisions within the vial.

Side Note: Some, but not all, manufacturers are using shaking speed settings expressed as M/S..."meters/second".  A machine setting in m/sec is not a comprehensive measurement of cell disruption efficiency.  The term has caused buyer confusion while comparing cell disrupter bead-mill products.  The term also makes it difficult to reproduce cell disruption protocols when using a different bead mill cell disrupter. 

Because there is no consensus performance term for shaking-type bead mill cell disrupters BioSpec Products suggests that shaking cell disrupters machines be operated at their maximum available speed setting.  Beadbeater applications requiring lower operating speeds are rare.  Put bluntly, if the objective is to disrupt cells, crank up the rpm of the machine and get the job done.  The optimal time of beadbeating is a relevant varimable and will depend on the nature of the biological sample and the type of bead mill shaker used.  With current high performance machines, wet milling for 1-3 minutes gives close to 100% cell disruption.  If you are doing PCR work with nucleic acids and are content with less than 100% cell disruption, shorter periods of beadbeating will suffice.

Besides the five variables shaking speed, vial throw distance, vial shaking pattern and orientation and time of shaking, three equally important variables which determine efficiency of cell disruption are bead size, bead composition and bead load in the vial.  These later three variables must be optimized by the user, not only for the particular ‘beadbeater’ machine being used, but for the type of sample being investigated."Solutions" to deal with these last three variables are being offered in the form of commercially available vials prefilled with beads.  Unfortunately, there is little comparitive literature documenting how these vendors came up with their "magic mixtures".

One can usually get comparable results by loading your own beads into vials or microplates (and save a lot of money, too). Usually only one kind and size of bead will suffice.  Our Bead Selection Guidelines give a straight forward advice on how to select the correct bead size and composition and, if you have a lot of vials to load, BioSpec has three different bead loading devices designed to streamline the loading process.

In addition to shaking-type bead mill cell disrupters there are also vortexing-type bead mill cell disrupters.  While the later will fulfill their intended goal, it can take 5 to 10X longer beadbeating times to get complete cell disruption.  The sole exception is BioSpec Product’s new SoniBeast™ cell disrupter, which uses patented high speed vortex technology to disrupt cells even faster than ordinary shaking-type beadbeating machines.