Microfluidic electroporation for cellular analysis and delivery

Abstract

Electroporation is a simple yet powerful technique for breaching cell membrane barrier. The applications of electroporation can be generally divided into two categories: the release of intracellular proteins, nucleic acids and other metabolites for analysis and the delivery of exogenous reagents such as genes, drugs and nanoparticles with therapeutic purposes or for cellular manipulation. In this review, we go over the basic physics associated with cell electroporation and highlight recent technological advances on microfluidic platforms for conducting electroporation. Within the context of its working mechanism, we summarize the accumulated knowledge on how the parameters of electroporation affect its performance for various tasks. We discuss various strategies and designs for conducting electroporation at microscale and then focus on analysis of intracellular contents and delivery of exogenous agents as two major applications of the technique. Finally, an outlook for future applications of microfluidic electroporation in increasingly diverse utilities is presented.

Temporally resolved direct delivery of second messengers into cells using nanostraws

“…Previously, nanotechnology has been applied to increase the efficiency of techniques such as electroporation. 32,38 The nanostraws provide a similar scaling effect to microinjection to apply a high degree of cell access and delivery to large numbers of cells. 30 Future studies using the nanostraw platform may involve improving time resolution and delivery speeds or more quantitative assessment of delivery levels, as the precise flux of molecules in the delivery channel into the cell relative to the channel concentration is currently unknown.…”

“…24,25 Microchips have demonstrated promise to this end by incorporating microfluidic valves and switching, 26 while nanoscale methods reduce sample volumes to further improve temporal switching resolution and delivery speed. However, the temporal requirement restricts the use of certain nanoscale techniques such as electroporation 38 and nanoparticles, 39 …”

Direct Permeation of Nanoparticles across Cell Membrane: A Review

“…They considered that this is due to decreasing the electric resistance of the medium with highly conducting gold NPs, resulting in much lower applied intensity required for the delivery. A new electroporation system integrated with microfluidic devices has also been proposed (Geng and Lu, 2013;Wang et al, 2010). In the microfluidic electroporation system, a single cell can be manipulated and be exposed to uniform electric field, as compared to conventional batch electroporation where electric pulse is applied to a bulk cell suspension.…”

Nucleic acid and protein extraction from electropermeabilized E. coli cells on a microfluidic chip

“…33 The occurring membrane destabilization phenomenon can be reversible and transient or irreversible resulting in cell lysis. 34 This phenomenon has been described as Maxwell deformation, 31 where the lipid bilayers are reorganized as a response to an applied voltage. A channel is formed due to the presence of water, forcing the lipids to reorganize in order to minimize exposure of the hydrophobic sites.…”