Abstract:

Micro-electroporation is an electroporation technology in which the electrical field that induces cell membrane poration is focused onto a single cell contained in a micro-electromechanical structure. Micro-electroporation has many unique attributes including that it facilitates real time control over the process of electroporation at the single cell level. Flow-through micro-electroporation expands on this principle and was developed to facilitate electroporation of a large numbers of cells with control over the electroporation of every single cell. However, our studies show that when electroporation employs conventional direct current (DC) electrical pulses the micro-electroporation system fails, because of electrolysis induced gas bubble formation. We report in this study that when certain alternating currents (AC) electrical pulses are used for micro-electroporation it becomes possible to avoid electrolytic gas bubble formation in a micro-electroporation flow-through system. The effect of AC micro-electroporation on electrolysis was found to depend on the AC frequency used. This concept was tested with mesenchymal stem cells and preliminary results show successful electroporation using this system.

Notes:

Ziv, Roee Steinhardt, Yair Pelled, Gadi Gazit, Dan Rubinsky, Boris eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov’t 2008/09/26 09:00 Biomed Microdevices. 2009 Feb;11(1):95-101. doi: 10.1007/s10544-008-9213-4.