Recent trends on micro/nanofluidic single cell electroporation

Abstract

The behaviors of cell to cell or cell to environment with their organelles and their intracellular physical or biochemical effects are still not fully understood. Analyzing millions of cells together cannot provide detailed information, such as cell proliferation, differentiation or different responses to external stimuli and intracellular reaction. Thus, single cell level research is becoming a pioneering research area that unveils the interaction details in high temporal and spatial resolution among cells. To analyze the cellular function, single cell electroporation can be conducted by employing a miniaturized device, whose dimension should be similar to that of a single cell. Micro/nanofluidic devices can fulfill this requirement for single cell electroporation. This device is not only useful for cell lysis, cell to cell fusion or separation, insertion of drug, DNA and antibodies inside single cell, but also it can control biochemical, electrical and mechanical parameters using electroporation technique. This device provides better performance such as high transfection efficiency, high cell viability, lower Joule heating effect, less sample contamination, lower toxicity during electroporation experiment when compared to bulk electroporation process. In addition, single organelles within a cell can be analyzed selectively by reducing the electrode size and gap at nanoscale level. This advanced technique can deliver (in/out) biomolecules precisely through a small membrane area (micro to nanoscale area) of the single cell, known as localized single cell membrane electroporation (LSCMEP). These articles emphasize the recent progress in micro/nanofluidic single cell electroporation, which is potentially beneficial for high-efficient therapeutic and delivery applications or understanding cell to cell interaction. © 2013 by the authors.