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Materials

Cells Get Electric Jolt, Then A Shot

by Lauren K. Wolf
October 24, 2011 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 89, Issue 43

Electric Injection
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Credit: Adapted from Nat. Nanotechnol.
As shown in an optical image (left) and schematic (right), Lee and coworkers use an electroporation device to inject biomolecules into a live cell. They first position the cell in one microchannel, load a complementary microchannel with DNA or drugs, and then make the “injection” with an electrical pulse across the connecting nanochannel.
Credit: Adapted from Nat. Nanotechnol.
As shown in an optical image (left) and schematic (right), Lee and coworkers use an electroporation device to inject biomolecules into a live cell. They first position the cell in one microchannel, load a complementary microchannel with DNA or drugs, and then make the “injection” with an electrical pulse across the connecting nanochannel.

A low-cost fluidic device containing both micro- and nanochannels enables scientists to deliver controlled amounts of biomolecules into cells quickly and with ease (Nat. Nanotechnol., DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2011.164). Using DNA strands as simple nanochannel templates, L. James Lee and coworkers of Ohio State University fabricated array chips on which pairs of microchannels are connected by a 90-nm-diameter channel. When the researchers placed a cell in each microchannel on one side of the device and loaded drugs or DNA into the microchannels on the other side, and then applied an electrical field across the array, they were able to drive the biomolecules through pores that opened up in the cells’ membranes. “It’s like giving the cells a shot without using needles,” Lee says. The device injected biomolecules with a cell-to-cell variation of 10–12%, he adds, which is less than the variation from delivery techniques using viral vectors and lipid complexes. This level of precision, Lee says, makes the array an analytical tool for studying fundamental cell biology and nanomaterial toxicity.

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