title: Micro-electroporation of mesenchymal stem cells with alternating electrical current pulses.
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.
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Bioengineering in the Service of Humanity and Society, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Roee
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ziv
authors.forename: Yair
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Steinhardt
authors.forename: Gadi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pelled
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gazit
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rubinsky
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D018274:Electroporation / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D059630:Mesenchymal Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D051379:Mice; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*