Micro-electroporation of mesenchymal stem cells with alternating electrical current pulses.
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.
Ziv
Roee
R
Research Center for Bioengineering in the Service of Humanity and Society, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
Steinhardt
Yair
Y
Pelled
Gadi
G
Gazit
Dan
D
Rubinsky
Boris
B
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*