An ultrasonic biosample disruptor with two triangular teeth on its radiation face

Ultrasound has been used in biosample disruption such as disruption of algal cell and DNA. New structure of ultrasonic biosample disruptor (UBD) needs to be explored to increase the energy efficiency. In this study, an UBD with two triangular teeth on the bottom radiation face of the water tank has been proposed, to concentrate the acoustic energy into the slot between the two neighboring triangular teeth, in order to raise the acoustic energy utilization and fragmentation performance. The acoustic energy concentration into the slot is verified by the FEM computation, and the improvement of fragmentation performance is experimentally confirmed with spirulina and tribonema, compared to the traditional UBD which has a flat radiation face. The number proportion of fragment in the length range of 10-20 mu m generated by the UBD proposed in this work is 17.08% and 10.82% more than that generated by the traditional UBD for the two samples, respectively. Besides, the UBD proposed in this work has a much smaller standard deviation of DNA fragment length (47 bp) than the traditional UBD (249 bp), with a similar mean length of fragments. Moreover, the maximum weight proportion of fragment in the range of 100-300 bp, generated by the UBD proposed in this work, is 71.4%. Ultrasonication is an effective method to disrupt algal cells for lipid extraction and to fragment DNA samples for sequencing. In this study, the authors propose an ultrasonic biosample disruptor (UBD) with two triangular teeth on its radiation face. Acoustic energy concentration in the slot formed by the two triangular teeth can enhance the biosample disruption effect for spirulina and tribonema, and the repeatability of DNA fragmentation, compared to the traditional UBD with a flat radiation face.image

Automated summary

In this study, a new ultrasonic biosample disruptor (UBD) was proposed to increase energy efficiency in sample disruption. The UBD design with two triangular teeth on its radiation face showed improved acoustic energy utilization and fragmentation performance compared to the traditional UBD. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed UBD generated a higher proportion of fragments in the desired length range for both spirulina and tribonema samples, as well as a smaller standard deviation of DNA fragment length, indicating better repeatability. The maximum weight proportion of fragments in the range of 100-300 base pairs was also higher for the proposed UBD.