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.
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Partial financial support was provided by the Hebrew University/Johnson&Johnson Fund for Innovative Science.
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Roee Ziv and Yair Steinhardt contributed equally to this publication.
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Ziv, R., Steinhardt, Y., Pelled, G. et al. Micro-electroporation of mesenchymal stem cells with alternating electrical current pulses. Biomed Microdevices 11, 95–101 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-008-9213-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-008-9213-4