Single-Cell Electroporation and Real-Time Electrical Monitoring on a Microfluidic Chip

This paper proposes a microfluidic system containing a constriction channel for single-cell electroporation and simultaneously monitoring the electroporation procedure by measuring the cell impedance variations. The constriction channel ensures that single cells can be elongated, and electroporated continuously inside the channel by the localized high electric field. Meanwhile, the impedance variations induced by cell passing and electroporation were monitored, which can be used to distinguish the electroporated cells from the others. The correlation between the cell impedance and electroporation status was studied, and high electroporation efficiency of 92.1% was achieved by propidium iodide (PI) in intracellular delivery demonstration. Our work provides a way for electroporation with single-cell resolution and a label-free method to evaluate the procedure in real time.