How fast will cells lyse under hypotonic conditions?

Question

Routinely, lysis of cells with hypotonic solutions is carried out along with some physical (douncing) or enzymatic (lysozyme) method to break open the cells. If one were not to do any of these and just resuspend cells in water, how long would it take to lyse the cells? I was discussing with a lab mate who claimed it would take hours while in my understanding, salt equilibrium should not take very long (maybe on the order of minutes?) and hence, lysis should be done within 20-30 minutes.

Answer 1

Yes, lysis under such hyptonic conditions would begin immediately, and should take on the order or minutes or hours, but not days or weeks. It will depend on several other variable such as the exact nature of the cell (RBC, neuron, muscle, etc.), the temperature, the pH, the concentration of cells in the water, etc. But, in general, you are correct. During my research on transmitter uptake, I recall placing nerve terminals prepared from brain cells in water, and they were >95% lysed after 15 minutes.