Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Nanoelectropulse-Driven Membrane Perturbation And Small Molecule Permeabilization, P. Thomas Vernier, Yinghua Sun, Martin A. Gundersen

Bioelectrics Publications

Background
Nanosecond, megavolt-per-meter pulsed electric fields scramble membrane phospholipids, release intracellular calcium, and induce apoptosis. Flow cytometric and fluorescence microscopy evidence has associated phospholipid rearrangement directly with nanoelectropulse exposure and supports the hypothesis that the potential that develops across the lipid bilayer during an electric pulse drives phosphatidylserine (PS) externalization.

Results
In this work we extend observations of cells exposed to electric pulses with 30 ns and 7 ns durations to still narrower pulse widths, and we find that even 3 ns pulses are sufficient to produce responses similar to those reported previously. We show here that in contrast to …