What is the purpose of homogenization in securing cellular components?
Think of homogenization as shoving everything into a blender (sometimes, actually, that’s what it is). You cut the big chunks of tissue into small pieces so that you can deal with them all on the same level. The smaller the pieces, the easier it is for the next step(s) in your procedure to deal with each cell (or group of cells) in the same way, with fewer other cells and less junk in the way. Think of it this way. If I took a piece of blended meat versus a chunk of meat, which would be easier to work with? The blended meat is cut into very small pieces, near the size of the individual cells that make up that meat. When I try to treat the blended meat with chemicals that would isolate a protein, for example, each cell would be affected by the chemical. However if I tried to do that on the chunk of meat, the chemicals would only reach the outside of the meat, but could not penetrate very well into the inside. Thus, the outside edges would be exposed fairly well, but the inside would be
