Electroporation-based applications in biotechnology

Abstract

Electroporation is already an established technique in several areas of medicine, but many of its biotechnological applications have only started to emerge; this chapter reviews some of the most promising ones. The introductory section provides an overview, and subsequent sections explore four types of such applications in more detail. The first application described is the most established one - the use of reversible electroporation for heritable genetic modification of microorganisms (electrotransformation); it is described how electrotransformation is used for production of biomolecules, adaptation of microorganisms to diverse conditions, and for basic research, followed by an overview of the parameters affecting the efficiency of electrotransformation. Then, the chapter reviews three classes of applications that generally aim to upscale to the industrial and/or clinical level, which have only recently started to advance to this stage. Electroporation-based inactivation of microorganisms is first described for wastewater treatment and then for nonthermal pasteurization of foods and beverages. Extraction of biomolecules by means of electroporation (electroextraction) is efficient both in unicellular and multicellular organisms, with the latter class of applications illustrated on the examples of grapes and sugar beet. Electroporation used for fast biomass drying is an emerging technology with several distinctive advantages over the standard techniques, including a much higher energy efficiency. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the main challenges, also from the hardware perspective, and of the future perspectives.