I am an engineering student studying how electric fields affect cells, specifica

Question

I am an engineering student studying how electric fields affect cells, specifically the phenomena of electroporation in living cells.

I know that electroporation is widely used for introducing genes into cells, but running a full transfection experiment is not so feasible in the lab I am working in.

My question is:

If I want to demonstrate the principle of electroporation, i.e. that cells open up and intake substances from the environment, by using some kind of a dye which i can later visualize, what could be a good model for this type of experiment? Specifically - what dye, what cells could be used for this?

Explanation / Answer

You will get a lot of false-positives using the following method, and a real transfection of a fluorescent protein is always the way to go, because then you will prove that the transfection was really successful.

That said, you could try to use DAPI, followed by fluorescence microscopy or flow cytometry. DAPI is a very bright stain for DNA and cannot pass an intact cell membrane. If the cell membrane is disrupted, e. g. by necrosis, DAPI will enter the cell. I have never seen anyone trying to prove electroporation this way, but it will be worth a try. It could be that the time is too short for DAPI to enter the cell, so you'd need to tweak your setup.

I'd try the following: Prepare a cell solution with DAPI (something like 5

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