A little question about crushing in liquid nitrogen - (Jan/18/2006 )

Does crushing of plant cells in liquid nitrogen breaks the nuclei or just break the cell wall and the plasmic membrane?

Nobody have the answer?

Hi

In theory, it should be possible to shear the cell wall, membrane and nucleus of the cell by crushing in liquid nitrogen, however I suspect that the typical methods of crushing plant cells, such as using a mortar and pestle will be too crude to do this consistently, hence the use of solvents and protein precipitation in DNA and RNA extraction.

Cheers
Bob