The process of electroporation used in the DNA transfer method

The transfer of DNA between two cells is a common factor nowadays. There are various methods to successfully transfer the DNA between the genes. The most trusted method for this process has to be electroporation. It is such an efficient method that introduces macromolecules such as DNA into a wide variety of cells. The fusion of cells can be used to produce genetic hybrids or hybridoma cells and this process is called electrofusion.

Electroporation does the usage of short high-voltage pulses to overcome the barrier of the cell membrane. When an external electric field is applied, which just surpasses the capacitance of the cell membrane, transient and reversible breakdown of the membrane can be induced.

Cells have a negative resting transmembrane voltage of a few tens of mV. When biological cells are exposed to short high-voltage pulses, the absolute value of the resting transmembrane potential increases several-fold. In this process, a very high electric field is generally induced in the plasma membrane, and electroporation occurs.

A new aspect of electroporation is, however, that by using extremely short pulses in the nanosecond range at very high voltages, cellular organelles can be electroporated without the cell membrane being permeabilized. This is possible when using pulses so short, that the charging time of the cell membrane is not reached. Equipment for this type of method is still in experimental set-up only.

However, World Precision Instruments (WPI) has come up with a superior system called Micro-ePORE which really does wonder in this field. And the success rate is proven to be higher than the normal success as seen in this process of DNA microinjection in the cell membrane. Therefore electroporation and DNA microinjection both are playing a significant and major role in the cell manipulation process in the modern scientific field. As in the laboratory tests, the scientists are getting higher success ratio, they prefer this modern process in comparison to the traditional technique of cell manipulation. In a nutshell, this whole process and techniques are indispensably followed by the modern scientists for enhanced research mechanisms to provide advancement to the field of genetic science and engineering.