Electroporators based on digital formation of arbitrarily-shaped electroporation pulses
Yakovenko, S.A.
Biomedical Instrumentation and Technology 38(5): 397-409
2004
ISSN/ISBN: 0899-8205 PMID: 15521517 Document Number: 572011
We have designed and constructed a Digital Poration System (DPS), a versatile device for electrotreatment of biological objects by electric field pulses. The feature distinguishing DPS from the currently available electroporators that are based on capacitor discharge through the load is the use of a digital-to-analog converter card as the pulse generator, with further amplification of the pulse by both voltage and current. The pulse shape is arbitrarily programmable in DPS and includes bipolar pulses, unlike other electroporators, which provide only unipolar exponentially decaying and rectangular pulses. In DPS, many of the drawbacks inherent in other electrop-orators have been eliminated, including the need for additional external pulse analyzer (optimizer) monitoring and logging the electroporation processes, the need to recharge the capacitor before any new pulse, poor precision in setting and measuring the pulse parameters, the need for an additional generator of a long-lasting low-voltage signal for electrophoresis of ions into the porated object, the need for additional AC generators for alignment of cells before, after, and during electroporation, and the need for an additional microchip for control of multipulse and/or repetitive protocols. The slew rate of about 1 V/ns, which is required for electroporation of most somatic cells has been achieved in DPS, for +/-250 V output voltage and 500 OMEGA load resistance. The application area of DPS is much wider than that of other available porators and includes electrochemotherapy, cell electrofusion, oocyte activation by calcium wave mimicking, dielectrophoretic hunching and alignment of cells, sorting of cells, and electrophoresis of charged species into the cells.