A microfabricated, flow driven mill for the mechanical lysis of algae

This paper reports a novel, new means of mechanically lysing algae using a microfabricated, flow-driven grinding mill. The mill is demonstrated to be effective in the mechanical lysis of the dinoflagellate genus Alexandrium, a neurotoxin producing algae, responsible for Red Tide and paralytic shellfish poisoning. Pre and post milling cell counts revealed lysing efficiencies as high as 96%. Selective amplification of lysate samples was successfully performed, using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and primers specific to Alexandrium, demonstrating that the released DNA is suitable for downstream analysis.