Any researcher who has had to process samples by grinding tissue with a mortar and pestle, cracking cells by vortexing, disrupting cells by sonication, or shearing tissues with a handheld homogenizer understands the difficulty of increasing throughput.  Though these methods are effective, they are usually best used when there are a limited number of samples.  When higher throughput is needed, homogenization needs to be performed in a microplate format so that homogenized samples can be subsequently processed with liquid handling workstations.

With explosions in genomics and proteomics research, several companies developed high throughput homogenizers, with the most popular being mixer mills which are also known as bead beaters.  A mixer mill uses balls made of glass, ceramic, or steel to grind samples.  A typical mixer mill will oscillate a deep well plate or 24 well vial set at around 1500 rpm thus providing sufficient energy for grinding balls to homogenize the sample.  Mixer mills use one of two motions for shaking samples, either a "figure-8" paint shaker motion , or a linear, reciprocating motion.  An evaluation between linear and figure-8 motion mixer mills shows that these instruments have different efficiencies when lysing cells in microwell plates (see figure).  Data reveals that figure-8 bead beating is less effective than linear motion homogenization.  Furthermore, an evaluation of the lysis efficiency between wells shows greater variation when using a figure-8 pattern over the more homogeneous lysis imparted by linear motion homogenizers.

Currently two high throughput homogenizers are available that provide linear motion bead beating.  The GenoGrinder 2000 and HT Homogenizer fill this niche.  For a comparison of these units see this link.

Linear Motion Mixer Mills

HT Homogenizer

Geno/Grinder 2000