Additives and methods to facilitate physical disruption

Additives/Facilitators

Cells can be treated with various agents to aid the disruption process. Lysis can be promoted by suspending cells in a hypotonic buffer, which cause them to swell and burst more readily under physical shearing. Lysozyme (200µg/mL) can be used to digest the polysaccharide component of yeast and bacterial cell walls. Alternatively, processing can be expedited by treating cells with glass beads in order to facilitate the crushing of cell walls. This treatment is commonly used with yeast cells. Viscosity of a sample typically increases during lysis due to the release of nucleic acid material. DNase can be added to samples (25-50µg/mL) along with RNase (50µg/mL) to reduce this problem. Nuclease treatment is not required for sonicated material since sonication shears chromosomes. Finally, proteolysis can be a problem whenever cells are manipulated; therefore, protease inhibitors should be added to all samples undergoing lysis.

The role of the DNase is to reduce viscosity, otherwise your lysate is highly viscous and things get trapped. Sanitation or some other treatment that disrupts the DNA can be used instead of DNase, or if you are doing a gentle detergent lysis then the addition of DNase just makes the subsequent steps easier. It should not have any effect on the bacteriocin concentration but might make it easier to purify. 

By the way, many bacteriocins are extracellular and you can purify them without lysing the bacterial cells. You might want to determine whether that is the case with yours. 

 Thank you so much, the answers are very helpful.